Monday October 7th, 2002

Renault technical director Mike Gascoyne has revealed that Formula One's technical working group have already discussed plans to introduce performance-induced weight penalties - but just for qualifying.

Grand Prix ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone said that plans to introduce ballast to slow Formula One's top teams - especially Ferrari - next year will be discussed in a Formula One Commission meeting on October 28.

But Gascoyne insisted that introducing ballast for races will not work and said that the teams could just be forced to run the penalties in qualifying to mix the grid and then be left free to race.

"At the end of the day, we spend two days at every circuit organising the cars with the quickest at the front and the slowest at the back and the order you have on a Saturday is what you would expect," said Gascoyne.

"So when you set them off at two o'clock on a Sunday afternoon they ain't going to overtake each other are they? It's just not going to happen. I think we have to look at ways of spicing the show up.

"But if you weight-penalty the cars so that they are all the same speed no-one is going to overtake anyone, so if you want to liven up the show that's not how you are going to do it.

"What you want to do is to have them starting from 10th instead of first and see if they can win it from there. Then you will get overtaking and exciting racing."

Published at 18:00:08 GMT