The FIA has given the green light to use its "eye in the sky" parc ferme system for the rest of the year, following a successful trial at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
With more teams on the grid this season, the FIA held talks with competitors over the winter to try and work out how best to cope with the parc ferme system that is in place from after qualifying until the start of the race. Rather than putting all the cars into one allocated garage, as had been the normal practice up until this year, the FIA experimented with a camera system mounted inside each team's garage in Bahrain.
The closed-circuit cameras keep watch over the cars, to ensure that no team personnel touched the car during parc ferme conditions. The cameras record a low-resolution image of the car during normal conditions, but if movement is detected near the car then it switches automatically to a high-resolution mode. A security guard monitors the camera feeds from all the garages, and alerts FIA staff if he witnesses anything untoward.
The trial worked so well in Bahrain, that the system will now remain in place.