Formula One: Race Director Defends Radio Clampdown

Formula One race director Charlie Whiting on Friday defended this season's clampdown on radio communications and promised it wouldn't cut out the "juicy" exchanges between teams and drivers.

After some drivers expressed concerns about the new restrictions, Whiting said they were intended to make sure teams don't have too much influence on racing.

"It's fairly clear that what we are trying to do is to make sure that the driver is driving the car on his own and he's not been told how to drive the car, simple as that really," said Whiting, 63, FIA's rules and technical supremo.

"The teams will do their very best to try and get as much information to the drivers as they can, but I hope they continue to do it in a legal way.

"We have heard many complaints from television viewers who were fed up with hearing the continual engineering assistance the driver was getting. That's fundamentally what we want to cut out."

He added: "You will still get what I will call... the juicy content, if someone has done something silly on the track, the driver can call him an idiot or something, and they are the sorts of things people (TV viewers) like to hear."

Whiting said radio communications would be closely monitored for possible breaches of the new regulations -- and also for coded messages.

"We have to be a little careful about coded messages," he said. "If we have some suspicion that a message is rather odd we could then look at the data from the car and see if the driver did anything in response to that message.

"Then in the next race if we hear the same message then we look for the same switch change then we will build up a little knowledge."

Teams have been handed a 31-point list of permitted communications to their drivers, although the drivers are allowed to say what they like.

Whiting said minor breaches of the new regulations would probably pass with a warning, but time penalties were also possible.

"If it's slightly more serious then the stewards might consider a reprimand, but if they were to do something which really helped the driver do something he should be doing himself, then I suspect a time penalty might be more appropriate.

"We will be listening to the team radios in real time. We have four people in race control listening to three drivers each and we have four or five software engineers listening to two or three drivers each.

"We will hear every single message, I am absolutely sure of that."

Drivers' initial reaction has been mixed, with McLaren's Fernando Alonso saying that with less information available, they will hesitate to change up their strategy mid-race.