Longer Friday practice among 2007 changes
18 October 2006
The FIA’s World Motorsport Council met in Barcelona on Wednesday and subsequently confirmed a number of changes to Formula One racing’s sporting regulations for 2007 and beyond.

Among the key changes for next season are alterations to the Grand Prix weekend format. Fridays will now feature two 90-minute sessions, with teams allowed to use a third driver, but only two cars. The two-race engine rule will no longer apply on Friday, so anyone experiencing an early failure will not be penalised with a grid penalty.

Under next year's move to a single tyre supplier, each team will receive only two specifications of tyre per event. However, they will get more sets - four per driver on the Friday and ten for the remainder of the weekend.

Safety car regulations have also been modified to prevent drivers diving for the pits the minute the safety car comes onto the circuit, and to stop backmarkers interfering with the leaders during a race restart.

And in a move to further improve safety in the sport, a GPS marshalling system, involving a cockpit light display of flag signals, will be introduced for next season.

The FIA release in full:
The following sporting regulations were approved for the 2007 FIA Formula One World Championship.

Practice
Teams may only use two cars in any one practice session. A nominated third driver or either race driver can use these cars in the session.
The two free practice sessions on the first day of practice have been extended from one hour to ninety minutes each.

Tyres
The single tyre supplier is required to provide identical quantities and specifications of tyres to all teams over a calendar year.
It may only provide two specifications of tyre at each Event.
The quantity of dry-weather tyres each driver may use at an Event has been increased from seven sets to 14. A maximum of four sets will be available to each driver for the first day of practice and 10 for the remainder of the Event.

Engines
The two-race engine regulations will now only apply to the second day of practice and the day of the race.
Engines homologated and used during the last two Events of 2006 must now be used during the 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 seasons.

Safety Car
When the Safety Car is deployed no car is permitted to enter the pits until all are bunched up behind the Safety Car. This is to remove all incentive for cars to be driven quickly back to the pits for refuelling when the Safety Car is deployed.
Before the Safety Car returns to the pits any lapped car between cars running on the lead lap must pass those cars and the safety car. It may then proceed around the track to take up position at the back of the line of cars behind the safety car.
Before a race is resumed any lapped car between cars running on the lead lap must pass those cars and the safety car and then proceed around the track to take up position at the back of the line of cars behind the safety car.

Stewards
The stewards may now impose grid place penalties.

The following sporting regulations were approved for the 2008 FIA Formula One World Championship:

FIA ECU to be fitted for all testing in addition to races.
A 10 place grid penalty will be issued for an engine change, as opposed to a weight penalty.
A five place grid penalty will be issued for a gearbox change, as opposed to a weight penalty.
Gear ratios may be changed once per race under supervision.
Damaged gear ratios and dog rings may be changed without penalty provided it is evident physical damage has not been made deliberately.

Ferrari’s request to supply two teams with engines in the 2008 championship has been accepted.

A number of technical regulations were also approved for the 2007 and 2008 championships.

courtesty of F1.com

Seems like there is some good ideas in there. Especially the pitting once everyone is behind the safety car

Anybody else think this is crazy. First one makes the engine rule a joke. "Ohh fark my motor broke of Friday qualify I better change it". Second one allows lapped cars to be allowed back onto the lead lap for no penalty, so what's the point of making sure you're not lapped. Unless you read it the other way were they are adversely penalising lapped cars by sending the completely to the end of the line and then that's unfair also. Worst Rule Ever.

^ yeah im not keen on the 'engine freeze' but the whole idea is to reduce costs of coarse, basically no development anymore. Most of the teams were pissed at this, particularly Honda and Toyota....both have huge engine resources. As far as the engine change rule, its the same now but just no penilty. To be honest we wont see many blow ups now, development is quite often the cause of the failure, finding the extra horsepower also finds the limit.

The ECU is the one that interests me...will the teams find a way to alter it? I know they are not supposed to but F1 sees alot of cheating. Sure the UCU's will be checked by the FIA but so is everything else.

If we see slower speeds than other motorsports then i think they've failed. The day a GP car or Champ car can have more corner speed or overall performance than an F1, than its all over for me.

^ yep totally agree,

what makes F1 unique is that it's at the cutting edge of technology, pushing the limits to make the fastest machines possible with no regard for money. Now they've introduced all these rules they are slowly turning it into another commercial racing series.

F1 was the best and most expensive of everything, take away that and you have champ and indy cars

F1 has always (or at least the last 30 years) been a commercial racing series. It corporate don't put up the coin then it doesn't happen. I reckon it's fair enough though 700 million dollars per year is a lot of money to be pissing away as they do. They'll never stop the spending but it's probably a good thing to try and dial them back a bit.

PK: The way I read that engine rule it'll have exactly the opposite. Teams will come out testing on Friday but they'll also push the boundaries on the engine dynos it the factory now and they'll bascially be back to having 1 engine per race meet. The only real difference is they'll have to spend more money to make sure they don't blow inside 1 weekend. If it were me every car in my team would have a mysterious engine failure on Friday Hell there might even be a hidden switch to lean out a cylinder to blow it or just shut it down to give it a miss on Friday to allow me to change the motors. Waste of time if you ask me. Either the engine does 2 whole meets or you don't bother and just say you have to do 1 meet on the same engine or cop a penalty or just let them go with as many as they want. Really for someone like Minardi etc race weekend engine testing is the cheapest testing they would do since they have to turn up anyway and in real terms a losing a motor isn't that expensive to them. At least not compared to the hours they'd have to spend doing the equivalent in proper testing or on a test bed.

R31 King, yeah fully agree. A1/GP2/Champ/Indy are all not that far off the pace. If the engines do stay ‘frozen’ for the next 4 years then that’s plenty of time to catch up. Maybe they will get pulled back a bit too.

Yeah Pupat, you bring up a good point…how the teams will react to new loopholes that they may be able to explore and exploit. But unfortunately for the engine manufacturers, they will not be able to tune the engines up any further than the last race we just had. All engines are now sealed so to speak (freeze on engine development). All teams will line up on the grid next year with the same hp and the same reliability as they had in Brazil 06, just gone. So if Friday test drivers are experiencing engine failures, then it’s not looking good for the race as it will be the same specification engine with the same weak point.

The only way is down, dial down the rpm to gain reliability and sacrifice hp.

Aero, driveline mass and friction are now more critical than ever in F1.