Categories: 2017 SeasonF1 News, Reports and Race Results

2017 F1 regulations must not prevent overtaking - Allison

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Ferrari technical director James Allison has warned planned new regulations for the 2017 season must take in to account the impact on overtaking.

The FIA released initial details of its requirements for the 2017 regulations earlier this year, with the main focus being on making the F1 cars quicker and more visually aggressive. While Allison believes progress is being made towards an exciting new set of rules, he says the knock-on effects must not be overlooked.

"I think that what we were asked to do was to make the cars look more aggressive, make the cars a lot faster - the fastest F1 cars ever - and to make them physically more tough to drive, not more difficult, but more physically arduous simply because the G-forces will be higher in the fast corners," Allison told ESPN.

"I think the rules will deliver on all three of those, but we will need to make sure we are keeping the level of overtaking in the sport more or less where it is now or at a level which is judged to be correct."

And Allison believes there are measures which can be taken to ensure it is still possible to overtake, but wants to ensure they are consider as part of the new regulations.

"There are devices to do that. The two main things that [have to] happen are tyre degradation, making sure the tyres are not too uniform in their behaviour through the race, and judging and tuning the size of the DRS correctly so an overtake is possible if you screw your courage up and do a good job."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.