By Jonathan Noble Friday, March 30th 2007, 13:02 GMT
Traction control has been banned from Formula One from the start of next year in a move supported by all teams and rubber-stamped by the FIA.
A meeting of the FIA's World Motor Sport Council earlier this week approved a number of changes to the 2008 F1 Technical Regulations - the most significant of which appears to be a complete ban on traction control.
Article 9.3 of the newly amended rules states: "No car may be equipped with a system or device which is capable of preventing the driven wheels from spinning under power or of compensating for excessive throttle demand by the driver.
"Any device or system which notifies the driver of the onset of wheel spin is not permitted."
Traction control returned to F1 in 2001 following years of suspicion in the sport that some teams were running clever engine management systems to get around a ban that existed at the time.
It was felt that with it was virtually impossible to guarantee that teams were not running such systems, so the teams agreed the only way forward was to free up the regulations.
However, the move to a standard ECU in 2008 means that it will be easier for the FIA to police engine management systems ? and it is believed that this has been the catalyst for engineering such a major rule change.
