Drivers speak out against car swapping

Formula One's leading drivers yesterday joined forces to ridicule plans to stem waning interest in the sport. Eddie Irvine and David Coulthard, along with Juan Pablo Montoya, spoke out at proposals put forward by the president of the FIA, Max Mosley, and the Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone.

Proposals have included the idea of penalising successful drivers like Michael Schumacher with a weight penalty once they reach a set points target. But far more radical is the suggestion that every driver should drive for every team in the first 10 races of a season, raising the prospect of Schumacher in a Minardi and Alex Yoong in a Ferrari.

"That's a non-starter," said Irvine here ahead of Sunday's final race of a season which has, at times, turned into a farce by Ferrari and resulted in falling television viewing figures. "How can I go and stand in the Jaguar showroom having driven a Ferrari? Or Michael, the image of Ferrari, and he is driving around in a Minardi in the Monaco Grand Prix."

Montoya backed up Irvine by saying the idea was "crazy", while Coulthard said: "There have been speculative ideas, some a bit silly. The knee-jerk reaction of putting in ballast and trying to handicap to improve the show I don't think is right. It goes against what Formula One stands for, which is a set of regulations, with which people with the cleverest minds and the best budgets do the best job."

Schumacher has won a record 10 of the 16 races so far this season to romp to a fifth drivers' crown while Rubens Barrichello has triumphed four times. But Ferrari sparked outrage by ordering Barrichello to move over for Schumacher in Austria. Schumacher then turned the climax to the last race, in the United States, in to a farce when he slowed to try to engineer a blanket finish, only to lose the race to the Brazilian.

"Michael screwed up," said Irvine. "But he should not be playing with F1. They [Ferrari] are not doing a very good job at the minute for anyone."

Irvine said the governing body should revolutionise the way the millions of pounds from television is shared by giving more to the smaller outfits.

"At the end of the day why give Ferrari maybe 15 times as much money as you give Minardi and then give them a load of lead to stick in the car to make it go slow? It is probably a better idea to give the smaller teams an equal share of the money. It won't allow them to beat Ferrari but it will pull them up a bit.

"The weight thing is having a rising scale going against success which I think is a bit wrong. But if you had all the money and split it differently it would make a lot of difference to the Minardis, Saubers and Jordans of this world and make damn all difference to the teams up there."