Ferrari Admit 2009 Rules Have Failed

The 2009 Formula One Championship has seen more changes to the sport's regulations than any other season before. Totally revised aerodynamic package, the return of slick tires, the introduction of the Kinetic Energy Recovery System, the testing ban, have all come together to bring us a new, improved look of Formula One racing.

While some of those changes were meant to reduce costs inside the sport, most of them were actually agreed upon in order to boost spectacle. And what better way to make the sport more watchable for the fans than create new opportunities for on-track overtaking. The FIA actually agreed to pay an independent Overtaking Working Group – former of experienced F1 engineers – for creating an F1 package more prone to overtaking.

While some have publicly criticized the 2009 rules for a number of reasons – creating too bigger gaps between F1 teams, or them being unclear – no one has really pointed out to the fact that overtaking doesn't really happen that often this year. Except for Ferrari's team principal Stefano Domenicali.

“I think the 2009 regulations were changed in order to have better overtaking, that was the main principle. I have to say that if you look at the races, that objective was not really achieved so far,” Domenicali said in a video interview with Shell.com/Ferrari.

“So that means that when there is a change of regulation, before doing something it's very important we really need to make sure that what we want to achieve in terms of objectives is really achieved. The objective that was achieved was the fact that we had a different grid, different cars were more competitive and this is for sure the only thing I can say on the new regulation,” added the Italian.