Despite claims that it will spice up the sport, drivers are unimpressed by the new radio communications ban.

In recent years one could be forgiven for thinking that most F1 drivers merely steered their cars, such was the stream of endless instructions being fed in to their ears by their engineers.

Already frustrated by gimmicks such as DRS, not to mention the need to conserve tyres and fuel, fans were further alienated by a formula that appeared to consist of drivers being the conduit via which the boffins were actually piloting the machines.

The new ruling that "the driver shall drive the car alone and unaided" is meant to eliminate the endless stream of information and instructions, and while the likes of Toto Wolff insist it will make the racing less predictable, the drivers aren't happy.

"Instead of instinct from the driver, we will follow what we agreed two hours before the race," warned Fernando Alonso. "It's strange the direction that they are going, in the era of communication and technology, Formula One tries to restrict it, which is probably not the normal way to go."

"I don't particularly see there being much of be a problem," said world champion, Lewis Hamilton. "Is it good? I don't really know but we'll manage it the best way we can."

"It's going to make it more challenging at times," argued Hamilton's Mercedes teammate, Nico Rosberg. "It has a big influence, it has gone to the extent of not being able to tell us that our strategies have changed.

"So if I change from a three-stop to a two-stop, I'm driving flat out thinking 'I'm stopping in two laps and then they're just not going to pull me into the box, and my tyres are going to be done'."

Jenson Button doubts whether the clamp down is going to be difficult to police.

"They won't be listening to every radio message, so we'll have to see how it goes," said the McLaren driver. "Hopefully they can listen to as much as possible to make it as fair as possible."

"It definitely helps the more experienced drivers," he added. "You go into the data and you learn everything you can. Whereas you become lazy if you've been in the sport for a few years. I remember the days when we had no information about what was going on, so I'm looking forward to it. It definitely will add something. It's just policing it is obviously pretty much impossible."

"It just puts a lot of extra load on the driver," claimed Sergio Perez. "I expect that everyone with their teams, or at least from our side, it's pretty normal what we have to do and how we have to react. I hope the other teams and drivers can find it a bit harder, that would be great, but it doesn't change a lot."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by C5, 18/03/2016 17:28

"More rules. Sigh. The main problem with F1 are the people why try to manage it...

F1 is a team sport, and I have no issue with all team members, including drivers, communicating whatever they want on the radio to, as long as the frequency is published and the transmission is not encrypted."

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2. Posted by Spindoctor, 18/03/2016 9:46

"This notion that the drivers had become mere robotic proxies for faceless Engineers & Strategists is completely out of kilter with reality. No matter how much technical or tactical data is transmitted to a driver it's still his job to translate that into action.

The root cause of this issue is, like most other bad things in F1, a consequence of over-complex rules and all the ill-advised ad-hoc tweaks employed to "spice it up".
If the tyres weren't made out of used chewing gum, and drivers didn't have to perm any two out of 4 (or whatever) then they wouldn't want\need to know what the opposition is doing. Unfortunately they do have to make arbitrary choices, and hence really need to know about their opponents' strategies. Similarly fuel limits mean that drivers need to know (as far as is possible) what others have used, and what (if any) "spare" they have available to use.,..

Will the lack of "coaching" (permitted in most other sports) have much effect? Overall probably not, but it could easily spoil the action and\or produce unexpected results. Will this be an improvement? It depends if you think Sport should be about the best athlete\team winning, or some contrived "spectacle" designed to generate fallacious "excitement""

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3. Posted by gturner38, 17/03/2016 19:03

"I don't understand why they can't tell the driver what their own tires are going to be at the next stop or what adjustments are going to be made to their own front wing. It's one thing to not tell the driver what to do, but it's something completely different to ban information that the driver needs to be able to make decisions on their own."

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4. Posted by alfsboy, 17/03/2016 13:51

"Years ago a Team manager and engineer told me that the driver was the weak link in F1 and it would much more interesting if they chucked him out. "

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Drivers unimpressed with radio ban

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