The fan survey commissioned by F1 drivers may have come ‘too late’ to make an immediate difference. But Alex Wurz, the president of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, insists the data collected by over 200,000 fans from 194 countries is “worth gold”, he told the German broadcaster Sky. So far, however, the results have not been discussed by the influential Strategy Group at its last two meetings, at which the future course of sweeping rule changes for 2016 and particularly 2017 have been discussed.
“I believe they (the survey results) came out too late for them to be discussed,” admitted Claire Williams, who attends the Strategy Group on behalf of the Grove team. “Obviously we have an agenda set a couple of weeks in advance, so no, we didn’t discuss them in that meeting but that is the forum for those kinds of discussions,” she added.
Austrian Wurz, a former F1 driver, agrees that the results were too late for the most recent meeting, but he is sure a collaboration in the future is possible. “This (the Strategy Group) is not an enemy group and they are really very interested in our cause,” he said. “I got a lot of mail from the teams who are waiting for the data. For the current talks, the survey comes a little late perhaps, but better late than never. I told them that such a thing should have been done ten years ago, but basically everyone agrees that we want a better formula one,” Wurz, 41, added.
