Drivers embrace planned traction control ban in '08

It is, to a Formula One purist, an awful sound.
Stand at the exit of many corners of F1 tracks and listen. As the cars accelerate out of the corner, the exquisite wail of the V-8 engines screaming up to 19,000 rpm is broken up by a string of guttural coughs and misfires and phlegmy spits.
That's the sound of the traction control kicking in. That's the sound of a computer doing the work and taking over instead of the driver using his finesse and skill to feed 750 horsepower to the back tires without them spinning too much and losing optimal grip.
For those purists, the good news is that traction control will be banned starting next year. There are some, however, who claim that this is bad news because F1 should be the height of technology and that traction control is part of the quest to build the ultimate machine.
Most of the F1 drivers disagree. The majority of drivers seem to be of the opinion that F1 is first and foremost a drivers' championship. It's about man (or woman) over machine, not vice versa.
Traction control has been banned before. At the end of 1993, new regulations wiped out many of the electronic driver and chassis aids -- everything from active ride suspension to traction control to antilock brake systems.
While it was easy for the tech inspectors to police most of the banned technology, this was not the case with traction control, which could be hidden deep in a car's software. There were constant allegations and outright accusations that some teams were using illegal traction control. These allegations often involved cars that were painted red.
Finally, the FIA gave up. It was better to let everybody use traction control (and launch control) than to let the fans continue to think that there was an uneven playing field.
Ironically, the sometimes comedic problems several teams had in getting their systems to work, not to mention that there was no change in the hierarchy of the teams, pretty much proved that nobody had been illegally using traction control in the first place.
Launch control, which used electronics to let the car make a perfect getaway from F1's standing starts, was subsequently banned again. But there is a fine line between launch control and traction control.
In 2008, the regulations call for all the cars to be fitted with a standard Electronic Control Unit approved and controlled by the FIA. Now that the FIA will have direct control of the ECU's software, there is no way a team can install a traction control system.
Race drivers being race drivers, just about all the F1 guys welcome the traction control ban. Every one of them thinks that they are better than the next driver, and this will be one of the areas in which they can prove it with their right foot instead of a computer making things equal.
"At the moment the drivers can go flat on the throttle from the apex [exiting a corner]," said Williams' technical director, Sam Michael. "From zero to 100 percent throttle. The engine doesn't necessarily do that, it is backing off, but the driver is just a passenger at that point. But you won't be able to do that next year because you will spin."
That's not to say that driving a car with traction control is easy. If the traction control settings are too severe, it slows down the car. The drivers and engineers spend a lot of time trying to find the optimal point at which the system kicks in. Jenson Button, for example, sets his car up so that it almost never uses its traction control.
At a recent FIA press conference drivers were asked what they thought about the looming traction-control ban. Here is what they had to say:


Felipe Massa: "I never drove a F1 car without traction control. It will be quite new for me, but it will be the same for everybody, so we just need to find the settings to make the car more stable. So it's going to be new for everybody. We just need to find ourselves quickly under the new rules."
Lewis Hamilton: "I think it will be better. I enjoyed driving GP2 without traction control and it puts more control of the car into the driver's hands. It's not easy driving; it's a different driving style, a different technique is required. It's going to make for exciting racing. You get up the inside of someone, you can really use the power to get yourself past on the exit of corners. But then also you have to learn to use your tires in a different way because obviously the more spin, the more the wear. It's going to be interesting, but obviously we're going to have to make a lot of changes to make it safe."
Jarno Trulli: "I think it's going to be interesting and definitely better. From my point of view, the more you give the car back to the driver, the better it is, or the better it is for me. I feel like I'm more in charge of doing things. At the moment, the cars are too easy. I'm really in favor of it."
Robert Kubica: "Well, I think it will be the same for everybody. So everybody will have to adapt a bit their driving, a bit the cars, a bit the setup to do this. Now F1 cars are built with this, and in some ways, we know we have this, so we choose some different way, maybe for next year. But we will know this and we cannot rely on traction control."
Heikki Kovalainen: "I think it's absolutely the way to go. Let's just stick in a third pedal, a clutch pedal under your feet, and put in the old H-box [gearbox]; that's the way to go in F1!"
While that horrible phlegm-filled coughing sound the engines make will be gone, banning traction control is not going to make a massive difference. The fast drivers will still be fast. And F1 cars will still be marvels of high tech.
We will not see, as Mark Webber points out, the cars doing huge power slides.
But we will see more driver errors and spins. The current breed of F1 car is a very twitchy beast, and it will be more nervous, especially in the rain, without traction control.
Let the best driver win!