By Alan Baldwin
LONDON, April 20 (Reuters) - Formula One needs to take a surgical approach to rule changes that might improve racing rather than a big hit with a baseball bat, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said on Monday.
Teams, engine makers and key F1 stakeholders were due to meet later in the day to put forward tweaks to the new rules in time for the next race in Miami in May.
"I must really say that the discussions that have been taking place between the group of drivers, the (governing body) FIA,
Formula One and the teams have been constructive," Wolff told reporters on a video call.
"We all share the same objectives. It's how can we improve the product, make it out-and-out racing and look at what can improve in terms of safety, but act with a scalpel and not with a baseball bat.
"I think we're coming to good solutions that we're going to ratify hopefully today in order to evolve, because it's only three races in," added the Austrian. "And in a way, we need to learn from the past where sometimes decisions were made in an erratic way and then we overshot and realised it wasn't good."
MERCEDES DOMINANT SO FAR IN NEW ERA
Mercedes have won all three races this season, the first two one-two, with Italian teenager Kimi Antonelli leading teammate George Russell in the standings.
Red Bull's four-times world champion Max Verstappen, yet to get close to the podium this season, has said the rules are fundamentally flawed and has hinted he could walk away unless some big changes are made.
Wolff said he was "carefully optimistic" that everything would align and played down concerns that the tweaks might not go far enough to placate those who wanted to see drivers go flat out without having to "lift and coast" and be slowed by having to manage the electrical energy.
The sport has undergone the biggest chassis and engine change in decades with new power units split roughly 50-50 between electric and combustion power.
Drivers have also raised safety concerns about widely divergent speeds between cars using an electrical boost and others slowing to recharge.
Wolff said everyone involved needed to "understand our responsibility as the guardians of the sport" and work to safeguard competition rather than seek an advantage.
"We shouldn't bad-mouth in public our own sport," he added. "We've been all falling foul to this in the past because of gamesmanship or because of trying to protect a situation or improve a regulatory situation.
"But we need to be very careful because the things we say in public, they may not have an immediate repercussion on how the fans perceive the sport but that comes with a lag."
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
