F1 Mulling over Rule Changes to Mirrors

The FIA have contacted the tech chiefs of all the F1 teams for a special meeting post the Hungarian Grand Prix to discuss changes to the rules involving mirrors.

The meeting has been sought on the back of complaints from the drivers that the rear visibility of the current F1 mirrors are poor because of the new regulations.

It was originally intended to push through the changes in time for the Singapore GP but the approval from Motorsport council was bound to take some time to come. So instead this meeting has been called.

Sebastian Vettel had qualified on third in Austria but dropped down three places as the FIA deemed that he had impeded Carlos Sainz’s qualifying lap. That incident gave fresh impetus to the mirror issues.

Jo Bauer, the tech delegate for F1 later conducted visibility tests with Vettel to determine how much of a problem the mirrors actually were. The FIA also said that it wanted to specify a location for all the teams to fit their mirrors rather than letting them choose.

The new rules being mooted state that the mirrors should be 640mm above the reference plane and 450mm from the centre point. A leverage of 5mm shall be allowed in both cases.

The older rules were such that the mirrors could be placed anywhere between 200mm and 500mm from the centre line of the car, while the height was not a restriction.

The biggest losers of this could be the Mercedes team. At the British GP last weekend, they tested a new place for their rear view mirrors, which was below the reference point currently specified by the FIA.

Their rivals, Ferrari, had earlier run into a similar issue with the FIA, wherein they were asked to remove a support on the Halo where they mounted their mirrors.