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2011 sees the reintroduction of the 107% rule - possibly.

does current formula one need the exclusion of teams, if they are slower?

It's good- it'll motivate slower teams to develop faster and be closer to the rest of the pack.

It's good for safety, but I'm not sure it will change how motivated the slower teams are. Surely they already are motivated to get their equipment up to speed as soon as they can.

and what about the tension in races?

I mean - nobody needs another webber stunt - but lapping easily turns things around - then and when...

the new teams are operating between 103 - 106% at the moment, with only HRT and one Virgin who went over the 107% this season in the first part of the season
so I think 107 is a nice cut-off

I don't see any reason for it not to come in, and it keeps any slow cars out in the future, so it must be a good thing

thanks for the calculation.

I somehow don't like it. Currently, there's no need for it. But on the other hand the FIA will fill up the 13th slot. Then, it could be the case that the new team will be not able to race due to the 107% rule and, therefore, they won't be able to gain valuable data as they can't test and race.

Good point. But on the other side, car running some 8s off-pace is dangerous for the majority of the field.
Look at this years new comers- they're within 107% limit in most cases, so it's possible and any new competitor is capable of doing it

to be quick - in F1 you need money to feed the motivation.

True, but money is not everything
Quick example- Toyota.

I don't see a reason for a 107% rule. In safety terms it doesn't matter much whether a car is lapping within 106 or 108% of the leader's time, the speed difference to the leaders when being lapped will be pretty much the same. It would only be necessary if there were any extreme cases cruising around.
A small team needs sponsors and as much TV coverage as possible. It needs to at least get the chance to pick up a decent position, there could always be some unforeseen retirements at the front. With no testing, small teams have little chance to improve themselves and rely on getting useful data from the race trims. Imagine the expenses a team has to cover travelling to all these races and then being forced to fly home on Saturday already, and what for? Everyone wants to see a full grid, no need to send any decent, hard trying team home. (you may introduce a 150% rule to keep away the Andrea Modas etc, but I don't think those semi-professional outfits will ever make it through the FIA selection process again anyway. If they do, they'll not make the grid in any case (-> USF1))

I think the biggest issue with 107% nowadays is the testing ban.

If a team turns up & ends up been outside 107% they end up losing out on track time which with the testing ban means they lose time they could be using to find improvements.

Lets take HRT this year, Lets say they were outside 107% for the 1st few races, With no testing & so little time to sort the car out to start with they would have a harder time than they already have to find the problems & try to improve.

i think 107% not needed cuz all cars will be "same", no DD, F-ducts... some cars will be slow, but not 5 sec, 2-3sec max

Do you think special dispensation would be applied there?

Well Lotus and Virgin have proved it is possible to start from scratch and be comfortably under 107% from the beginning, so there's no excuse for any other team to build a car that's outside that. So the testing ban argument is nonsense - there's no real excuse for being outside the 107%. If you haven't built a car that's within it, if that's what the rule states, then you shouldn't be on the grid, and if you can't improve, that's the team's problem, not the FIA's

For my money, I'd rather see the percentage calculated from someone other than the pole winner. Maybe they could look at a calculation from (say) 11th spot (the first car not to go through to quali 3).

This would prevent issues where where one manufacturer is ridiculously fast, say Red Bull qualify 1 second faster than everyone else, while the slow teams may still be at a reasonable (acceptable) speed difference from the rest of the field. Also could prevent the situation where a slow team doesn't have qualifying speed, but race speed is within a reasonable margin.

What would happen in Alonso's situation at Monaco this year re Qualifying and a 107% rule?

I forget how the time % works already.

Alonso would have been allowed in on the basis of his practice times.

I would give any car that misses the 107% margin a day of testing with the driver that missed out.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011