The FIA has announced a raft of changes to Formula One following today's FIA Formula One Commission meeting in London with a new format to qualifying, the banning of team orders and a revised points system among the most important.  After a meeting heralded as being one of the most important in the history of the sport the key changes were announced, FIA President Max Mosley joining F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone for a press conference at London's Heathrow airport.

Qualifying will now be held on Friday and Saturday with a one hour session each day commencing at 1pm.  The cars will be run one lap at a time with the order on Friday dictated by driver's current Championship positions.  The results from Friday will determine the running order on Saturday, but in reverse order so that the fastest on the first day goes out last.  This change will have the effect of guaranteeing TV exposure for every team and driver while also raising the prospect of unusual starting grids in the event that weather conditions interfere with Saturday qualifying.

Practice will continue to take place between 11am and 12pm Friday and 9am and 11am on Saturday.

The World Championship points system is to be revised so that first eight cars will score points on the basis of 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1, thus enabling more teams and drivers to score points and giving the first two finishers a smaller margin over the rest of the field.  Team orders which interfere with the race result are banned, though no details were contained in the FIA statement explaining how this would be policed.

There is also a proposal to completely change the face of testing, aimed at reducing costs.  The FIA statement says that, providing that by 15 December at least three teams undertake to the FIA not to run more than 10 car-days of private testing between March 1 and November 1 next year, the teams concerned will be able to test at each Grand Prix between 9am and 11am on Friday morning.  Moreover, teams using this facility will be able to use both their spare car and the test driver during this period.

Concerning tyres each team will be allowed to use two different dry weather tyres at each race, replacing the current system where each tyre company can provide only two types of tyre in total.  Only one type of wet tyre will be used for each event.

The final announcement from the FIA concerned the 2003 Belgian Grand Prix, which has been cancelled.  The teams could not unanimously agree to run in Belgium without tobacco advertising next year and so the race has been removed from the calendar.  The removal of this race comes as a blow to not only the Belgian authorities but also the teams, drivers and fans since Spa-Francorchamps is arguably the best track on the F1 calendar.  However the Belgian government unilaterally introduced a ban on tobacco sponsorship, a move which went against the FIA's agreement with the EU to end tobacco sponsorship in F1 at the end of 2006.