FIA (international racing body) president Jean Todt believes introducing rules to combat new Formula 1 regulations that have reduced engine noise will not be implemented during the current season.
Todt did however promise to look into the issue after a couple of high profile racing figures recently spoke out about the lack of engine noise thus far in 2014.
Formula 1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone has been an outspoken opponent of the new greener engines that operate at a fraction of the noise level and use less fuel than in previous years.
“I don’t think the way things are at the moment are acceptable to the public,” told autosport.com ahead of last weekend’s Bahrain open.
“People buying tickets to come here expect to see what Formula 1 used to be.”
Ecclestone’s latest comments come just weeks after he claimed to have been “horrified” by the lack of noise at the Australian Grand Prix season opener.
Four-time world champ Sebastian Vettel has also emerged as an opponent to the V8 downgrades and described the new turbo engines as “shit” at the Malaysian GP.
“Vettel made a negative comment about the engine noise, but not on the engines,” said Todt.
“He’s an icon of our sport, four-time world champion … if he came to me about the noise problem I would listen because he is qualified to talk about it.
Mercedes revealed this week that the manufacturer came close to pulling the plug on F1 before the sport agreed to switch to the new hybrid engines.
Daimler’s head of research and development, Thomas Weber, told BBC Sport that Mercedes were considering withdrawing from the grid had F1 not adopted a greener approach.
“The key challenge for the future is fuel economy and efficiency and with the change in regulations F1 is the spearhead for development,” Weber said.
“We had hard discussions. And it was always – and even more so when it came to the later years – harder to explain why we were using naturally aspirated engines.
“Now with these new regulations I can clearly convince the supervisory board that the (F1 team) are doing exactly what we need – downsizing, direct injection, lightweight construction, fuel efficiency on the highest possible level, new technologies and combining a combustion engine with an e-motor hybrid.”
Todt said any mid-season rule changes would have to receive unanimous backing from all teams.
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