Luca di Montezemolo fears for 'taxi-cab' F1

[Nero Horse]

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has warned that Formula 1 risks emulating "taxi-cab driving" due to fuel and tyre conservation concerns.

A new limit of 100kg of fuel per race is set to make fuel management a major strategic concern in 2014.

Di Montezemolo fears that dynamic, coupled with the constant need to look after tyres, will reduce the spectacle of F1 while simultaneously making the races harder for fans to understand.

"I don't like his sort of taxi-cab driving," was quoted as saying by Autosprint.

"What I don't like is this complexity in the interpretation of the race, both from the drivers' and the spectators' point of view.

"Up until yesterday you'd only look at tyres: most of the attention went to tyre management.

"It was misleading to see a driver in the lead, while realising that you can't consider him really leading because he would soon pit for a tyre change anyway. It was difficult to fully interpret a race.

"These days, on top of all that, you need to add fuel consumption and managing of a race with a limited amount of fuel.

"I prefer the sort of F1 where you need to always push at the limit."

Despite such concerns, di Montezemolo stressed that he was fully in favour of F1's new era.

"We can't be among the ones who don't push for a more technological and innovative F1, because we then transfer this knowledge on production cars," he said.

"For us it [has been] like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle: some things have gone the way they were supposed to, others haven't.

"The difficulty has been the balance between the combustion engine and the electrical one; the thing that has pleased me the most was seeing correlation between wind tunnel and track data, which has always been our problem for the last four years.

"These new 'hybrid' F1 cars represent an extremely complex project. The difficulties also encountered by the others demonstrate that.

"Reliability will be important; it will be interesting to see how many cars finish the first race."

[Winter]

I tought the old wind tunnel was build 1997, not four years ago. Am I wrong?

[F1NAC]

I tought the old wind tunnel was build 1997, not four years ago. Am I wrong?

He was reffering on corellation problem we had last four years since the scale models were resized on 60percent

[Nero Horse]

I tought the old wind tunnel was build 1997, not four years ago. Am I wrong?

Yes, the wind tunnel was built in 1997 but it has been a problem for the last four years and now it's fixed again.

[nikola0406]

Maybe I am ignorant, but with all that money, couldnt we just build another one when we saw it doesnt work? Or find a way to fix it earlier, why 4 years?? 4 years to fix something that vital for F1?? I can not belive that wind tunel was the only problem.

[abbottcostello]

i think they tried to fix for a couple, then a couple more to build the new

[shamim179]

Sometimes the windtunnel was correlating correctly and at other times it wasn't hence why it caused a lot of confusion. But I agree this decision of upgrading the windtunnel should have been taken earlier.

[wisepie]

I have to agree with LdM as I feel it will get too complicated for the average viewer to understand all the implications of Hybrid F1. It will diminish the actual racing in favour of electrical and fuel strategies, but if F1 has to lead the way for future automotive developments, I'm not sure how else it could be implemented. But I do think it'll be fascinating AND frustrating to watch, the teams must have agreed to it, so it's a bit late for LdM to be complaining.