Calls to ban engine 'party modes' fall on deaf FIA ears

Calls to ban F1's 'party modes', mainly centered around Mercedes' use of extra power in qualifying, have been dismissed for now by FIA race director Charlie Whiting.

Red Bull Racing's Christian Horner and Helmut Marko have voiced their criticism of Mercedes' ability to dial in at will an extra boost of horse power in qualifying, to produce a marginal but impacting advantage.

Lewis Hamilton's impressive performance in the Saturday afternoon session in Melbourne highlighted once again the Silver Arrows squad's edge, prompting Red Bull to call for restrictions on special engine modes

Horner has suggested teams qualify and race with identical engine settings while Red bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko has urged the F1 and the sport's governing body to intervene to enforce parity among engine manufacturers.

• Kill the party, and get rid of qualifying engine modes - Horner

However, the FIA currently has no intention of taking action to police special engine modes, which Whiting insists are not clearly defined by the technical regulations.

"Some teams were hinting that they might not be getting equal power units," the FIA race director told Motorsport.com.

"Whatever party mode is, I’ve not seen it written in any technical documents!

"Put it like this. If Mercedes customers come to us and say, ‘We’ve asked for party mode and we’re not getting it,’ then we might have something to say about it."

Furthermore, Whiting doubted any imposed restrictions would actually solve the issue given the engineering complexity of F1's power units and the various modes which are exploited.

"There are all sorts of modes on these engines, and we know full well that they change at various times during the race," he said.

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter