A Complete Set Of Wets
Thursday 3rd January 2008

We can't truly believe this is the shape of editorials to come in 2008 - but it looks like we're going to start 2008 agreeing with Max Mosley and disagreeing with the drivers.

The reason? Autosport canvassed driver reactions to the prospect of racing in the wet in 2008 without traction control. The answers amounted to a collection of moans from various F1 pilots at the top of their profession.

Jenson Button: It's going to be very dangerous. We couldn't have raced in Fuji without traction control - there would have been people spinning on the straight."

Felipe Massa: In terms of safety, this is a big step backwards. For sure, we will have more accidents and racing in wet conditions will be very dangerous. I've spoken with Michael Schumacher and several other drivers and they've told me it will be more dangerous driving a car without traction control now than it was in the past. Another race like Fuji would be very dangerous.

Donning his Grand Prix Drivers Association cape David Coulthard says he's taken up the cause with the FIA's race director, Charlie Whiting.

"Fernando Alonso aquaplaned off the road in Fuji - even with traction control. The electronics still couldn't support him - and that will happen a lot more without traction control because Formula One engines are very peaky."

Whiting was the undisputed superstar of the Japanese GP, getting some very difficult decisions right on a day when lesser men might have thrown in the towel.

"I'm very relaxed about how Charlie (Whiting) operates. He may have made some difficult decisions - but he's only reacting on the information he's had. He doesn't have the spray we have - when you're flat out at 180mph you see simply nothing.

"But I'm confident Charlie will do the right thing based on us helping and advising him - and that's why we've started a dialogue now rather than trying to react afterwards."

Though safety is always the aim, F1 is nowhere near the danger sport people think it is. Three-day event horse riding is far more dangerous, Moto GP creates more injuries through a season and World Rallying has notched up far more fatalities than F1. Yet F1 drivers are by far and away the best paid motorsport drivers on the planet.

It's at wet races where they earn their money and their yachts in Monaco and their villas in the Balearics.

If they think F1 is dangerous now, how about when Jackie Stewart or James Hunt raced, with no HANS device, no carbon fibre monocoque, no triple layer nomex, no small fuel loads, no big gravel run-offs (wire catch fencing at Woodcote to wrap the car up).

F1 drivers have to learn to drive around the risks. As Stirling Moss always says, in an age when drivers could be thrown from their cars, you didn't tend to interlock your wheels with another car so casually. This is also Max Mosley's line.

"Driving in the wet is quite dangerous - with or without traction control," he told Autosport. "It's dangerous in the sense that you're likely to go off but you're less likely to hurt yourself because the speeds will be lower. That was always the theory of the grooved tyre because you reduced the grip and the severity of the accident.

"Imagine, in the most extreme circumstances, holding the British Grand Prix at Silverstone on packed snow - nobody would get hurt because nobody would ever get up to enough speed to do any damage! It will make it more difficult in the wet - but it's difficult in the wet anyway. And people forget, even the least competent F1 driver is still amazingly good at what he does."

Though the prospect of seeing marshals holding out a snow flag is an unlikely one, we get the point.

What F1 drivers are really scared of, is less about safety and more about being shown up. The flattery of traction control made them all look reasonable in the wet. Now they have a much greater chance of falling on their asses. Over the last few seasons, the wet races have always been outstanding. Without their artificial aids they are going to be even more fun.

And let's be honest - no matter what formula you're in, when have you ever heard a driver who raced in the wet say there was reasonable visibility? As Martin Brundle recounts; "you're not actually looking for your turning in point, you're listening out for the car in front of you changing down."

TC is gone. Lads, deal with it.

their gas pedal mashed to the floor, they are allowing the technology figure out just how much power to apply, that's totally a magical benefit.

the single most important skil in driving fast - smoothness.