Eh?

Am I the only one who thinks this is gibberish?

F1 is a sport. Sport is a meritocracy.
The best competitor wins and you reward them for their achievement.

Ideally, the way you get exciting, unpredictable, events is by having a bunch of equally competitive cars on the grid who all have a reasonable chance of victory.
If that isn't the case, however, it's ridiculous to attempt to create a situation that prevents the best competitor from winning.

That's kind of like saying that Tennis needs to be revised purely to stop Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic winning everything in sight or that football needs changing simply to stop Man Utd or Arsenal winning continuously.

If it turns out that, say, a football team is winning because they're buying heaps of expensive players or that a tennis player is winning because of the equipment they're using, by all means try to regulate those factors to negate that advantage but it's completely wrong to attempt to introduce randomness into sport because sport isn't SUPPOSED to be "random".

F1 is actually really lucky in this regard.
It has two distinct sets of rules; the sporting reg's and the technical reg's.

Frankly, they need to leave the sporting reg's alone completely. They should be purely intended to establish which team is the best within the sport's meritocracy.
If they think that one team has become too dominant, change the technical reg's to remove that advantage.

Leave the bloody RACING alone.

Gah......should have done this earlier. For anyone who wants to try and add a little interest to the race weekends there is a Digital Spy prediction comp running. With the revised format this year you still have time to get some predictions in before the race and score points.

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2142308

As amusing as that might be, no; qualifying would no longer be needed.


Well, I dunno. What's the difference? Six seconds over three miles? It's not Ford Fiestas we're talking about. If it is a problem just have them start behind the Safety Car.

Interesting to note that Toto Wolff said reverse grids were on the table but this new system was chosen as the 'least worst' option.

Well that was a bit of a let down, 4mins left in Q3 and the 3rd and 4th place drivers are already out the car and being weighed. Not a good start to this new system and if tou look at the grid line up there's not much change from usual.

OK, not read the thread re the new qualy reg's as I didn't want initial views to be tainted by others opinion.

........My god that was absolutely dreadful.

It was dull, confusing, pointless and completely un-absorbing.
Nearly 4 minutes left of qualifying and everyone just packs up and goes home. Rosberg just gave in, why not carry on for another lap? Oh yeah, that's right, the tyres are so crap that they can't do more than one flying lap. That's not a dig a Pirelli as such, but at the decision makers that want to drive these cars on crap tyres.
There was absolutely NO DRAMA in this qualification format at all. Utter crap.

Sooner we go back to the previous qualifying the better. That was absolutely woeful! (And confusing)!

Great idea - just force everyone to drive as slow as possible in qualifying.

That would be even worse than the fiasco we witnessed in Melbourne today.

For god's sake - just go back to how it was in the last century:

- Have specially produced super-soft tyre compounds just for qualifying. Of course, carrs could go out on other tyres if they wanted to (eg: wet tyres in the rain)
- Give drivers a plentiful supply of these tyres. Enough for them to be able to do maybe up to say 12 runs in the session.
- One long session of an hour. No drivers get knocked out during the session.
- No parc-ferme' so teams and/or drivers can adjust the car's settings after (or during) quaifying and before the race.

This would allow the real qualifying experts to excel. Those drivers that are not afraid to really go for the balls-out laps that can result in a really quick time or alternatively going off the track. Of the current drivers, it would be Lewis Hamilton probably and maybe Sebastian Vettel also that would excel.

In the past Ayrton Senna and Mika Hakkinen were masters under this system. Celebrate this skill as it is what qualifying should be about - one lap speed. As most lower motor-racing formulas realise.

I also think a few championship points should go to the driver that gets pole during each race weekend.
Either that, or have a seperate (far less valuable) championship that offers a prize to the driver that has most pole positions in a season.

This type of format would maybe result in an empty track for parts of the session but it is far fairer. It rewards driver skill and teams' ability to produce quick cars (and sometimes make good strategic calls if the weather conditions are changeable).

I think this format would probably suit TV channels showing highlights from qualifying, rather than the whole session which would be no bad thing.


Really is is not difficult.
Keep it simple, stupid (as th old saying goes)..

Clearly the least worst option was in hindsight to leave it as it was!

Continually messing around with contrived regulation changes to try and please sponsors, without adequate thought and thorough testing and pilots, will slowly destroy the spectacle and they'll have shot themselves in the foot. They did the same thing with tyres, a few other things recently too, no doubt.

They should take things a bit slower, maybe a bit like how IFAB do things in football before changing anything - much more detailed investigation and real live pilots. Today's qualifying should have been announced in the first place as a one-off pilot and nothing more.

The previous system was also contrived. Just allow the teams and drivers to do what they want within a set time limit.

I didn't say it wasn't. My point is the continual contrived changes they are making, without proper testing and piloting, after which the changes could be quickly modified or abandoned. The previous system might of course have passed those tests but the new one certainly wouldn't have!

Sorry I may be wrong so please correct if I am but listening to a lot of the team bosses saying how shit the new qualifying session was and saying they knew it would. Did they not vote yes to introducing it?

If so, surely they have no right to moan about it.

Hopefully the Mercedes dominance is not going to continue this season again, although looks likely so far.

I'm among the countless F1 fans on here who think the new qualifying system is clearly unsustainable.

I was trying to remember when the previous Q1/Q2/Q3 system came into being and what did they do before that. I've followed F1 for over 40 years and have always watched the TV coverage since the BBC first had the exclusive rights back in 1979, but some things become a little blurred over time!

What would be wrong with having a single qualifying period of, say, up to an hour, during which all the drivers could go out on track with as much or as little fuel on board as they liked, and could use whichever tyres they felt gave the best results on the day? Surely the best car/driver combinations would still rise to the top like the proverbial cream, but at least it would have been every man for himself ... which is what racing always used to be about!

The reason they scrapped the single quali period was that it led to people mostly sitting out most of the session with nothing to show the punters but empty track bar the odd small team looking for TV time. The three session quali was fine as it was.

Of course but that is too sensible for F1 bosses to comprehend. It is also what happened in the nineties.

It was basically like that before then too (except there were two 1 hour sessions - one held on the Friday and one on the Saturday). The quickest time adriver set on either day would be used to determine their position on the grid.
Normally the quickest times were recorded on the second day (unless it rained). the Friday session was often viewed as a practise session by many.

Qualifying sessions were never broadcast on TV in those days.

The ony changes to that system that may be beneficial would be to intoduce championship points (or a seperate championship) for the driver that achieves pole position. As well as having no limit on the number of laps a driver could do within the session (I believe there was a maximum limit of 12 - at least in the nineties).

It amazes me that nobody seems to consider this when they advocate reverse-grids.

What, exactly, IS the incentive to qualify well if it's going to put you at the back of the grid for the race?


The whole point of the previous system was that it allowed drivers to do that while, at the same time, ensured that the track was relatively clear of slow-moving cars while the fast cars were competing for pole-position, which was a BIG problem back in the 1970s.

And, of course, the whole reason they decided to get rid of the original "free-for-all" system was that it often resulted in no cars on-track for the majority of the session and then a mad dash to set a time when conditions were considered optimal.

The main reason for this happening was that there were a limited number of laps each driver could do and/or the number of tyres they could use.

Wouldn;t need to be an hour long session. Could be 30 minutes perhaps so that not too many sets of tyres get ruined.

Surely the problem of slow cars gettiing in the way of drivers doing a quick lap was caused by the lack of blue flags in the 70s? It happend in races as well in the 70s and 80s. Rene Arnoux and Philippe Alliott were renowned for being difficult to lap.

It's true enough that penalties might mitigate the problem today.

I rather liked the existing system simply because the 3 sessions turned quali' into more of an "event" - allowing the teams a fair amount of leeway to do what they want in each session while also forcing them to appear on-track over an extended period of time.

Watching the qualifying 'highlights' on Ch4 this afternoon, OH actually fell asleep. Says it all really.

Again:

Actually ended up sounding like a decent competitive race with Hamilton having to fight back from a poor start.

Lots of action lower down with Haas starting well and a nasty crash involving Alonso.

Some lucky people in F1 today.

Alonso is lucky to be alive, Hamilton is lucky to have got 2nd place and Rosberg was lucky Ferrari screwed up their race strategy.

Overall, I think the whole field showed that the main thing that promotes close racing is stability in the sport rather than contrived ideas.
Ferrari is catching Mercedes, the midfield is very close and the tail-enders aren't ridiculously slow.
It looks, at the moment, like none of the cars are going to be just blowing past other cars like they're standing still this year.

Interesting, maybe, that Ferrari decided to do something other than go toe-to-toe with Mercedes after the red flag.
I wonder if they thought their car wouldn't be quick enough on the hard tyre or whether they doubted that Vettel and Raikkonen would be able to keep Rosberg and Hamilton behind for 30-odd laps?

Incredible crash by Alonso though.
He turned half a million quid's worth of carbon fibre and titanium into scrap and walked away without a scratch!

Wow

Just seen the Alonso crash

Guess it shows how much safety has improved over the years

Amazing

My idea to change the format would to be to have quali on Friday, a reverse grid sprint race (15-20 laps) on Saturday for half points and the feature race on Sunday. Teams could start on fresh rubber for the sprint but would have to take whatever tyres they finished the sprint race with into the feature race. That way, a front runner out of position in the sprint could gamble on a late sprint race stop to have fresher rubber for the feature race. It would also give the smaller teams something to race for - with a sprint race championship to contest.

Great first race. Alonso was very lucky to walk away from that crash. Well done to haas team as well on their first race to finish 6th. This season might not be the walk over many thought it would be for mercedes although its only race 1 so lets not get too excited. So glad qualifying format has been reverted back to last years for next race.

Has anyone watched the highlights on channel 4? Tried it on but there was a break. I bet there are a few breaks on 4.