FIA clarify radio restrictions

Cape Town - The FIA has issued clarifications on Formula 1's banned messages in the wake of Nico Rosberg's British GP penalty.

The German was hit with a 10-second time penalty that cost him second place in the race after Mercedes were deemed to have breached the regulations governing banned messages.

At the start of this year's championship, the FIA introduced extensive restrictions on team radio with the aim of drivers racing "alone and unaided".

Under the new directive issued ahead of the Hungarian GP, teams can inform the driver of an "indication of a problem with the car. However, "any message of this sort must include an irreversible instruction to enter the pits to rectify the problem or to retire the car."

Teams can now also give instructions to select driver defaults but "this must be for the sole purpose of mitigating loss of function of a sensor, actuator or controller whose degradation or failure was not detected and handled by the onboard software."

The statement added: "It will be the responsibility of any team giving any such instruction to satisfy the FIA technical delegate that this was the case and that any new setting chosen in this way did not enhance the performance of the car beyond that prior to the loss of function (see Article 8.2.4 of the Technical Regulations)."