http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2014/09/1...eam-radio-ban/
The FIA’s sweeping new restrictions on what types of radio messages teams are allowed to send during races will render many of the communications they have been using illegal.
A review of the radio messages sent during last week’s Italian Grand Prix indicates over a third of them are likely to contravene the FIA’s new guidelines.
The new restrictions will be felt most when it comes to managing the power units, which drivers received many messages about during the last race. Prohibitions on driving style information, fuel saving, tyre condition and race start modes will also be affected.
Most of the FIA’s new limits on radio traffic will be introduced at this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix. Further restrictions on messages concerning the state of tyres and gearboxes and the learning of gears will be imposed from the following round in Japan.
The Italian Grand Prix under the new restrictions
The following table shows all the radio messages that were broadcast by FOM during the Italian Grand Prix with all the messages that could be outlawed struck out.
This sheds some light on how enforcing the limits is not going to be straightforward. In the case of any grey areas a strict interpretation of the restrictions has been applied.
For example, “other car reporting rear tyres going off” has been deemed illegal on the grounds that drivers may not receive “information on tyre pressures or temperatures”. The stewards may take a more lenient view, but there are potentially many cases like this where the teams will want to define exactly what constitutes a legal and illegal message.
By stating that coded messages are forbidden, the FIA has given teams a clear disincentive to try to get around the rules. However they will still want to communicate as much information as they can to their drivers, and ways could remain for them to do that.
For example, drivers already hear audio tones which tell them when the lift the throttle when heading into braking zones in order to optimise their fuel saving. There appears to be nothing in the rules clarification to stop teams from extending this practice and creating a range of alarms for other warnings – such as poor fuel economy, low battery charge and so on.
The 74 messages broadcast during the Italian Grand Prix was considerably lower than that seen at many other rounds this year. Of those, 27 (36.5%) would be affected by the new rules.
That does not necessarily mean we will hear fewer messages in the broadcasts. One team indicated the number of their messages which were broadcast represented only 10% of all the messages they gave their drivers. Therefore we may simply hear more of the messages which were legal to begin with. As the limits apply to practice and qualifying as well, we’ll get the first indication of their impact on Friday.