How will the radio ban affect the drivers?

Radio Clampdown has been postponed to next year

Will it affect the drivers?

The verdict from the Big Boss is out and the teams are forced to follow it. The recent clampdown by FIA on the exchange of radio messages during races has become quite the talk of the paddock and also among the fans just ahead of the Singapore GP. But while the FIA has gone back to it’s decision and has decided to pospone the ban on messages relating to car performance until 2015 (after a protest from all the teams), the ban on concerning a driver’s own performance will still hold for the races to follow.

So what will be the impact of this ban on the drivers? Will it affect the performance of some of the drivers drastically? Will some drivers have an edge over the others? Let’s have a look

Essentially, a driver is currently aided with a lot of data with respect to the his performance, his car’s performance and how to improve it and also with frequent updates on how the other drivers are doing including the driver’s own team-mate. This is pretty much the job profile of a race engineer.

Actual reason for the clampdown

But the primary reason for such a directive is that the season has seen quite a bit banter on the radio(Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton) involved in quite a bit being exchanged which sort of hinders the whole idea of racing where the driver is supposed to be performing at his best and using his own skills to handle tricky situations on the track. While both the Mercedes drivers have been aided during their triumphs in the season, it’s Rosberg who has an upper hand in getting instructions from the pit-wall.

FIA and more importantly Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone has enforced the Article 20.1 from the F1 sporting regulations which says that “the drivers need to driver their car alone and unaided”.

So what it means is that the drivers will have to raise the bar when it comes to taking decisions on the track and the overall management of the car. For the fans it also means that they won’t be able to hear some of the most famous messages such as the one given by Red-Bull to Sebastian Vettel “Multi-21” in Malaysia last year, Kimi Raikkonen being quite vocal to his race engineer “Leave me alone I know what I’m doing” before winning the 2012 Abu Dhabi GP.

Quite clearly there are drivers who need more information than others. And the ban on the radio messages will affect such drivers but then it is unlikely to bring about a significant change. It will be almost like going back to karting where a driver just needs to get their head down and drive unaided with any kind of messages.

Massa disagrees

However, there is a dark side to the ban as well. While some of the drivers feel it is ok to go ahead with such a change, Felipe Massa is not quite in favor of it. According to Massa, radio messages aren’t just about increasing the driver’s performance it is also about how safe the driver can be on the track. Given the complex systems behind the setup of a Formula One car, the radio messages from the pit-wall help the driver in avoiding a mishap. No better person would understand the value of such messages than Massa who has had quite a few situations of on-track mishaps.

All said and done the decision of banning certain radio messages has been welcomed by some, for others it takes quite the fun away of listening to an interesting exchanges on the earphone. But messages which help the driver avoid certain mishaps cannot be banned. It’s time for fans to see some pure racing guided by driving skills of drivers but the decision to delay an aspect of the ban till 2015 comes as a relief to all the teams given the complex setups of the Formula One cars.