Ferrari has finally bowed to mounting pressure to ditch its controversial ‘traffic lights' pit-stop system, in revealing that it is to re-instate the traditional manual ‘lollipop' for the final three races of the 2008
Formula 1 World Championship campaign.
The
Scuderia's automated procedure first hit problems during the European Grand Prix in Valencia in August when
Felipe Massa was released directly into the path of the
Force India of
Adrian Sutil during his second pit-stop, earning the Brazilian a €10,000 fine for what was deemed by race stewards to have been an ‘unsafe' incident.
Worse still, shortly afterwards team-mate
Kimi Raikkonen pulled away with the refuelling hose still attached to his car, and a similar fate would catastrophically befall Massa in the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix late last month, when a ‘human error' led to a mechanic erroneously pressing the button for the 27-year-old to go before the refueller had finished.
That led to the São Paulista – locked in fraught title combat with McLaren-Mercedes star
Lewis Hamilton – to again narrowly miss colliding with Sutil on pulling away from his pit ‘box, and having to drag the refuelling line the whole length of the pit-lane before pulling aside and waiting for his pit crew to arrive and – with some difficulty – detach it.
The loss of time and subsequent drive-through penalty meted out saw Massa take the chequered flag well outside of the points in an unlucky 13th position – and slip some seven points shy of Hamilton in the drivers' standings, what could be a crucial margin come season's end.
F1 supremo
Bernie Ecclestone has suggested that ‘if Massa loses the world championship, he will know the team were responsible' [see separate story –
click here].
