APRIL 29, 1996

...in a stormy F1 Commission

THE FORMULA 1 COMMISSION meeting at the Nurburgring was stormy affair, not only because of the tire issue but also because the F1 teams and the governing body failed to agree on several points under discussion.

We hear that there was general agreement that superlicence applications will include no legal wording at all next year and the FIA will leave it up to the drivers to sort out whatever insurance they care to take rather than trying to dictate what they have to do. There were also discussions about the use of third cars, although we do not believe that any conclusions were drawn as the smaller teams are not interested in being pushed down the grids by extra cars being run by the bigger teams.

The real fireworks however came over the issues of black boxes - which the FIA want to have put in each car and over the question of whether or not there should be a month-long ban on testing at the end of the season.

The FIA was asking each team to pay $50,000 for the black boxes, but the teams objected and there are even believed to have been calls for the FIA to pay the teams for running the units which have been designed to be used by the FIA, recording data in the case of accidents. The testing ban is another source of great rancor among the F1 men with Mosley and Ecclestone fed up with the politicking which is currently going on. Initially the British teams all agreed that they would not test for a month, but the move was blocked by Ferrari. Now it seems Ferrari agrees to the ban but the British teams are saying that they do not want to join in. Mosley and Ecclestone are understood to have lost their tempers when this became apparent.