Have your say: are the current radio rules hurting or helping Formula 1?

The restrictions on Formula 1’s team radio regulations have been brought under close scrutiny after Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen both battled technical problems without assistance during last weekend’s European Grand Prix.

The radio rules were changed last year and again at the start of this season to prevent the teams telling their drivers to change their driving and how manage their cars from the pitwall. The move was designed to enforce Article 27.1 of the F1’s sporting regulations, which states “the driver must drive the car alone and unaided.”

The teams can still relay safety information, including instructions to pit or stop the car due to problems, marshalling information and passing on messages from race control.

There were moves to ban any discussion on strategy, but this was relaxed on the eve of the Australian Grand Prix and the teams can still tell their drivers about pit and tyre plans, and what their rivals are doing.

But the more detailed exchanges about engine and car settings are still outlawed, which disrupted both Hamilton and, to a lesser extent, Raikkonen’s races in Baku. These are highly complex cars, so has the ban actually hurt the racing by taking key players out of contention in certain situations? Or has it helped the racing by increasing variability, along with the new rules on single clutches that have certainly mixed up the race starts.

Such a situation concerned Hamilton; he radioed his Mercedes team on lap 27 to report that he was not getting full power in his car and he was told a lap later that “the problem appears to be in the current mode you’re in,” by his engineer Pete Bonnington.

Hamilton responded that he did not know what that meant and he made several more calls explaining that he could not figure out how to cure the problem via his dashboard.

When the problem finally rectified itself by lap 43, Hamilton was 13.9s behind Sergio Perez, who he had been following closely in the first half of the race, and he then decided to turn his engine down for the final eight laps of the race.

Raikkonen also vocally aired his frustrations at his Ferrari engineer Dave Greenwood being unable to tell him “yes or no” about an issue with his own power unit on his way to fourth place.

After the race, Hamilton questioned the need for the radio restrictions and said his problems had had an impact on the “spectacle” of the Baku event.

"The radio ban, as far I'm aware, was supposed to stop driver aids,” he said. “That wasn't a driver aid that was a technical issue. The FIA know that Formula 1 is so technical, far too technical almost.

"To have that many switch positions, that's something you should be able to rectify because the only people who can see the issue are the guys in the garage.

"Today, it would've added to the spectacle if I would have had full power because I would've been more in the race, fighting with the guys up ahead."

Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff also questioned the radio rules and suggested that they should be relaxed to allow the teams to help their drivers if an issue develops during a race.

He said: "We want to see drivers racing each other [so] we need to look at the rules. It's not that I'm complaining, it's the same for everybody, I think the Ferrari had the same issue.

"You can do two things: you can either make the technology much less complicated, I don't think this is the right direction, or we maybe adjust the regulation so you are able to communicate more with the driver in case of a problem."

McLaren’s Fernando Alonso also voiced his disapproval of the current radio restrictions was, and he too questioned why the teams were prevented from helping their drivers with problems when a current F1 car was “like a spaceship” to drive.

He said: "I thought from the beginning this rule didn't make much sense. It's like a spaceship we're driving with all this technology, but we have no information available, so sometimes it's difficult to know what's happening in the car and what the solution will be. In the future, perhaps we can address this."

There are arguments to be made both for and against the current radio restrictions. First, they add an element of variability to proceedings – Hamilton surely would have comfortably made it onto the podium were it not for the problems such was Mercedes’ pace advantage in Baku – and it puts the drivers back in charge of the racing.

But the 2016 rules have meant the F1 broadcasts have been missing the entertainment and insights that fans used to get - Sebastian Vettel’s seagulls and episodes of swearing aside – and they mean a driver is disadvantaged through no fault of their own, with the team powerless to assist. It also makes the cars appear too complicated and adds an unnecessary element of danger if a driver is having to focus on changing switches than racing at top speed.