Zoom KERS has yet to make any real impact on F1

Niki Lauda has been forced to sit out the Australian Grand Prix.

The triple world champion, who attends every round of the world championship as a pundit for German television, reportedly damaged his hip on a recent walk with his dogs.

Austrian Lauda, 60, instead remains in Vienna, where he had a minor operation.

"No-one should be concerned," he told the German Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag. "In two or three days everything will be healed."

The injury, however, has not dimmed Lauda's notoriously blunt style, as he showed in his regular column for the Swiss newspaper Blick.

When discussing Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems, the expensive new technology used by some cars and not others, he wrote: "I hope we do not have to bother the fans for the whole year with this theatre."

This view was backed up by former team owner turned television pundit Eddie Jordan who claims KERS has no place in Formula One.

Lauda is expected to be back in action next weekend in Malaysia.

E.A, Source: GMM
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