MOTOR SPORT/Formula One: Formula One's new rules are already causing controversy with David Coulthard and Michael Schumacher trading accusations and rebuttals over the one-shot qualifying rules which make their debut in this weekend's season-opening Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne.

The new rules, which provide for qualifying sessions on Friday and Saturday of the race weekend, only allow a driver a single run to set a time each day and after Saturday's grid-determining session, cars will be impounded by the FIA until the start of the race, whereupon drivers will start using the tyres and fuel load left at the end of the Saturday session. It has been speculated that some back-marking teams will run light fuel loads and risk an early pit stop in order to assure themselves of a grid place from which points may be a possibility, and McLaren driver Coulthard believes this could lead to collusion between small teams and Ferrari.

The Scot said that the one-shot system could encourage inter-team orders whereby a small team runs a light fuel load, gets a high position and then is used to block faster cars that, on heavy tanks, have qualified behind it.

World champion Michael Schumacher dismissed his McLaren rival's theorising, however, saying he could see no reason why such underhand tactics would be adopted by his team.

"It would be a very unfair tactic," he said. "I can't see why other teams would interfere; they have their own interests."

Ferrari have often been pointed to as the likeliest beneficiary of inter-teams orders, given its close relationship with mid-grid team Sauber.

The Scuderia supplies engines to Peter Sauber's team and recently provided engineering input into the design of the Swiss outfit's cars.

Ferrari's fellow Italian squad Minardi are also regular visitors to Ferrari's private Fiorano test track. Schumacher, though, denied that there was any special relationship between the teams.

"It is a surprise to hear that if a team like Minardi test on our circuit they are aligned with Ferrari," said Schumacher. "If you want to say things you can always say things but at the end of the day everybody will want to do their best."

Coulthard's speculations on the new qualifying rules extended to the first qualifying session on the Friday. During this session drivers will take to the track in drivers' championship order and will again have one run (an out, an in and a "hot" lap) in which to set a time.

That time will then determine in what order the drivers take to the track in Saturday's session, which determines grid placing. With tracks improving by crucial tenths of a second during the old single Saturday session, order of running in the new second session could prove crucial.

Coulthard believes the new rules could lead to situations where teams deliberately try to qualify slowest on Friday.

"On Friday you are going to see a little bit of low fuel running but if you really believe in the weather forecast, there might be scenarios where teams will, in an ideal world, try to qualify one car quickest on Friday and the other slowest," said Coulthard. "That would mean that you've covered the weather window for Saturday qualifying with one car out at the beginning of the session and the other at the end. Of course it's never easy to be fastest but being slowest should be a wee bit easier.

"It will vary weekend to weekend and the weather will be a factor," he added. "There's very accurate forecasting now and it will get like that because you have to maximise the rules that you race within. What they have done has created an opportunity and a need to be a bit more tactical."