Interlagos bumps a part of F1, says Max.

FIA president Max Mosley has said that the state of the Interlagos circuit had nothing to do with threats to remove it from the Formula One calendar, claiming that the teams should be able to cope with rough surfaces.

Mosley, speaking at a special press conference at Imola, said that there had been no question of punishing the Brazilian GP organisers for the state of their track, and that the $100,000 fined levied against them in the wake of the event two weeks ago was in proportion for the problems that occurred in qualifying.

''If you are suggesting that Interlagos was dangerous because it was bumpy, I cannot agree,'' he replied in answer to questions from journalists, ''In the tradition of road racing, there is no reason why a track should not by bumpy - indeed, there is nothing to prevent us putting a sleeping policeman at each end of the pit-lane!

''The teams know that there are bumpy tracks on the championship schedule, and they should set their cars to suit the conditions. There is no difficulty in setting up a modern F1 car for bumps - it is just that it won't be as fast as it would on a smooth circuit, where it can be set up lower.

''Interlagos had been resurfaced before this year's race, but the subsoil beneath the road is so unstable that the bumps reappear within a matter of weeks.''

The president went on to explain that the World Motor Sport Council had had the option of handing down a heavier fine - or even excluding Brazil from the championship - following the interruptions to qualifying at Interlagos, but admitted that evidence presented by the organisers had prevented this from happening.

''It became apparent that they had underestimated the effect of an F1 car passing underneath a lightweight advertising sign,'' he revealed, ''At the speed which the cars were doing at that point on the circuit they are producing about two tones of downforce. In order to generate that downforce, it requires a huge quantity of air to be moved upwards very suddenly and, given the blast of air that the signs were subjected to, we felt that we should not have allowed those signs to be located there. Indeed, the Safety Commission is now examining whether advertising signs should be allowed to hang over a racing track at all.

''Bearing in mind that we allowed the Brazilian promoters to place the signs there - and they probably didn't know what potential there was for the failures which occurred - it seemed only fair to impose the comparatively modest penalty.''