FIA to hear to F1 fans' voices
Formula One fans will this week get a unique chance to help change the sport for the better, as motor racing's governing body goes public with the biggest ever fans' survey on the state of Grand Prix racing.
With FIA president Max Mosley having long believed that team bosses were overlooking the interests and desires of spectators in their move to agree on a future direction for F1, the FIA has initiated the survey to make sure the supporters' voices are heard.
An FIA spokesman told Autosport-Atlas: "At the beginning of 2005 the FIA launched a consultation on the future of Formula One with all of the sport's stakeholders. We felt that including Formula One fans in this process was essential.
"To help shape the future of the sport we want as many fans as possible to visit our website and complete the online survey."
This survey, which can be accessed later this week on the FIA's own website,
www.fia.com, aims to get feedback from fans on what their opinions are on the sport - and what differences they would like to see made.
Mosley is currently heading up plans to define a new set of Formula One regulations from the start of 2008 - although he has found several teams reluctant to join in those discussions until market research has been completed.
Key figures from F1 have long echoed Mosley's belief that the fans' opinions on the sport are too often ignored.
Renault director of engineering Pat Symonds is one man who has often said that more consultation should be made with the public - although not necessarily just with diehard F1 fans.
"I've always advocated that if we want to know what to do, we should be asking the public," he said last year when talking about the continued problems of finding an acceptable qualifying procedure.
"What we should do is go out on a Saturday afternoon while qualifying is on and ask the people in the street, in the shopping centres 'why aren't you watching qualifying, what is wrong with it? Why aren't you watching racing?'
"Those are the people whose opinion we need."
The results of the FIA survey are due to be published later this summer.
http://www.autosport-atlas.com/news.aspx?id=44256&s=5
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Toyota escape heavy punishment
Toyota have narrowly escaped losing the points they scored in the first four races of 2005 after it was discovered that prior to Imola they'd raced without the correct paperwork.
All teams need a competition license which is issued by their national authority before they can be issued with a superlicense by the FIA. A superlicense is needed to race in Formula One.
However, while Toyota had a superlicense, it was found that they'd failed to renew their competition license since 2000. And that was only renewed prior to the San Marino GP.
The punishment for racing without the license could have cost Toyota all the points they'd scored in the initial four races.
"If they apply a sanction we have to accept it," Toyota Motorsport President John Howett told Reuters last week.
"The FIA has the right to apply sanctions but I hope it will be commensurate with the size of the error. We have tried to be completely transparent."
"This has been blown out of proportion to what we see as an unintentional and fairly minor error relating to the paperwork."
However, Howett needn't worry about being penalised as FIA President Max Mosley has cleared them of intentionally cheating.
"There won't be any penalties for Toyota, even though until the Spanish Grand Prix they raced without the licenses required by the FIA," Mosley told Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport.
"It was a mistake, with no real cheating involved."
Further explaining Mosley said: "It is an administrative matter, an error with no fraud."
http://www.planet-f1.com/news/story_19546.shtml
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Me, they should have been fined at least...
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