Alonso: Cars more difficult to drive
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Ferrari drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa are worried they'll have too many buttons to press on their steering wheels following the latest Formula One rule changes.
Speaking yesterday at Ferrari's annual winter retreat in Madonna Di Campiglio, Italy, the drivers addressed the admission of adjustable rear wings, the return of the KERS power boost system, plus the switch to Pirelli tires for this season, all combined with extensive testing limits.
"Without realizing it, we're losing the focus on driving," Alonso said, adding that "the cars become tougher to drive when you have to make all these changes from one turn to the next."
The rear wings are perhaps the biggest novelty. While designed to facilitate more passing, nobody is sure what effect they will have.
Drivers will be able to adjust the wings once they are two laps into a race, but the system's availability will be electronically controlled and it will only be activated when a driver is less than one second behind another at predetermined points on the track, then deactivated once the driver brakes.
"If you make the wrong choice and you have three cars behind you, you could fall from first to fourth in an instant," Massa said. "We have so many things to do on the steering wheel but we still need to drive the car. We can do it, but from a driver's point of view it's not fantastic. On every (turn) there are three or four buttons to press. It's... too much."
The switch from Bridgestone to Pirelli as the sole tire supplier could represent an even larger challenge.
"The tires are essentially the biggest change for 2011 because that alters our style of driving," Alonso said. "Everyone has the same brand so people talk about it less, but you have to adapt very quickly. Teams will have to resolve problems by the second or third race."
If it doesn't rain during one of the 15 days of preseason testing in Spain next month, teams could enter the third race of the season in Malaysia using untested wet tires.
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