GP gag order lets drivers talk the talk

MARINA Bay is an entrancing sight under moonlight and floodlights, Vegas with noodle bars and a street circuit.

The Singapore F1 Grand Prix's Marina Bay City Circuit

MARINA Bay is an entrancing sight under moonlight and floodlights, Vegas with noodle bars and a street circuit.

Sunday night’s scoot around the Singapore Grand Prix circuit should be agreeable to Daniel Ricciardo, as the FIA unveils rule changes designed to prevent Formula One drivers from being coached from grid-to-flag by computer-savvy engineers delivering excessive technical advice from team garages.

Let’s not overcomplicate an impossibly complicated F1 season but Red Bull Racing’s hybrid turbo engine can only match the superior grunt of the Mercedes at selected locations — those tricked-up venues where the spoils and colossal bottles of Mumm champagne go to the finest driver rather than the architect of the most­ ­advanced motor.

The Marina Bay Street Circuit has 23 corners on every lap of a devilish 61-lap, 308km passage. The oppressive heat, the almost non-existent margins for error ... here’s the most challenging event on the F1 schedule. The safety car will have its engine running.

Radio blah-blah is out. A crackdown is being launched on the chatter between drivers and the engineers hooked up to computers delivering real-time data on the performances of the cars. In 2012, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen told his Lotus engineer: “Just leave me alone. I know what I’m doing.”

But most drivers sweat on the advice coming through their headsets. When Ricciardo was stealing the Hungarian Grand Prix, Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg pleaded to his team: “What do I do now?” He’ll have to work it out for himself this weekend. In the same race, Raikkonen asked: “Do I have a left-rear puncture?” Ferrari replied: “From the data, it seems not.” The data will be less readily available.

Messages on the wall of pit lane will be forbidden. The FIA predicts it will be wise to “any message that appears to be coded”.

Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff said: “This is a complex and controversial decision which will require a significant effort from the teams to understand how best we can work around it.”

Formula One’s regulations stipulate: “The driver must drive the car alone and unaided.” The Marina Bay Street Circuit will be the start of a more strict interpretation of the laws. The direct technical questions about the car’s progress are being phased out. Inquiring about the gap to a rival will be allowed. Drivers will not receive messages on fuel consumption, the problematic innovation that led to Ricciardo’s disqualification at the Melbourne GP when his communications broke down.

Statements of the bleeding obvious will still be encouraged. Past examples include Nico Hulken-berg’s after a collision in Hungary with his Force India-Mercedes teammate Sergio “Checo” Perez. From Hulkenberg: “I think I just crashed into Checo?” From Perez: “I think Nico just crashed into me?”

Meanwhile, Wolff has lifted the lid on the deterioration in the personal and professional relationship between Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. Twenty-two points separate the Mercedes duo atop the world championship standings.

Speaking to BBC Sport, Wolff said: “It has changed from, let’s say, an almost amicable relationship at the beginning of the season to a very intense moment, where it was almost like realising these two are enemies competing for the world title.

“It’s a learning process. These boys have been calibrated their whole life that their main priority is to win the drivers’ championship in F1.

“And here they go. They’re in the same car and competing against each other for that trophy. One is going to win and one is going to fail. This is a new experience for them. A difficult experience, maybe.”

Wolff added that F1 had never been a bastion of BFFs.

“There are 22 guys out there and all of them are ruthless,” he said. “They know what they want and they will try to take it.

“Nico has always been like this. I don’t know why anyone had the perception of him being Mr Nice Guy. Lewis has found his own way and developed extremely impressively and he doesn’t need so much management.

“We need to understand what kind of background and environment we need to provide so he functions best.

“It makes no sense to try to change a personality and say: ‘You know what, you need to have the Niki Lauda, or the Nico Rosberg, or the Fernando Alonso approach, and you don’t need your dogs and you don’t need your LA and you don’t need your music’.

“That’s not the case. Lewis needs all that. It’s his personality and it makes him function well.”