Trulli: Some drivers don't care about safety.

Jarno Trulli has slammed some of his Formula 1 rivals for refusing to join the Grand Prix Drivers' Association (GPDA), suggesting they 'don't care' about safety.

The Italian was speaking in the wake of Heikki Kovalainen's horrific high-speed smash in the Spanish Grand Prix a fortnight ago, one that initially left the Finn unsure of whether he would be fit enough to compete again in Turkey this weekend. On the back of that, Trulli has gone on the offensive against some of his competitors who have elected not to become members of the organisation that meets regularly to discuss safety within the top flight - amongst them McLaren-Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton and world championship leader and defending title-winner Kimi Raikkonen.

Back in March, the former had claimed that he had not joined simply because he was too busy, telling reporters: "It's time as much as anything. If you are part of an important organisation you have to be committed, and I really don't have time for that at the moment."

Toyota star Trulli, however, gave short shrift to that argument, insisting every driver should play a role in the body responsible for liaising with the FIA on matters of importance including having proper medical teams at test circuits, with members paying an annual subscription to cover costs based on the number of points they score.

"Everybody is very busy," the experienced Italian fired back, speaking to international news agency Reuters in Istanbul. "We are not asking anyone to work 100 per cent for the GPDA - we are only asking them to be part of it.

"I think they just don't care about safety. If you don't want to be part of the GPDA, it just means you don't want to be part of the safety improvement.

"Every driver should be a member because we are talking about our safety. You want to contribute. Everyone should have his own opinion; we are listening to everybody and trying to follow the best for all of us, not for one of us."

Safety has always been of paramount importance in grand prix racing, with tremendous advances in the area that have thankfully seen 14 years now pass since the last fatality, when Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger were tragically killed at Imola over the weekend of the San Marino Grand Prix back in 1994.

Both BMW-Sauber's Robert Kubica - in Montreal last year - and Kovalainen are able to pay tribute to the remarkable progress made in saving them from injury, with esteemed medical advisor Dr Steve Olvey, director of the neuroscience intensive care unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami and a founding member of FIA's safety division, suggesting the Finn would have been dead had his Barcelona accident happened ten years earlier [see separate story - click here].

"It is not only luck that I came out of the crash," Kovalainen underlined. "It is really the work that has paid off. I can't be more than thankful about that, but we should carry on working on improving as much as we can. If there are any other areas we think we can improve, then we should go for it."

"His accident and my accident in Canada have shown that safety standards in F1 are very high," concurred Kubica, "and we have people working on it trying to improve more."