Some good ideas here. Or they could have 4 free practice sessions. 3 1.5 hour ones on friday and 1 hour long one on saturday. And in the 1st friday session the teams only use one car which is driven by their test driver.
An interesting idea Bergkamp. It might work as a compensation for a gentle reintroduction of testing for all, thereby depriving the points scorers of yet more time to develop their advantage. Needs a bit of thought - but interesting nonetheless…
Actually that could well if it was intergrated with my idea of an extra practice session for test drivers only.
Yes Sea-man! That's what I meant to repeat in my last comment. I'd forgotten you'd suggested 'testing for test drivers' in this forum before. It sounds an interesting combination of ideas. Perhaps you and Bergkamp should get together and forward your proposal to the FIA? Seriously, it could work !
A special Friday testing time for non first 2 team drivers ? A great development feature for aspiring drivers - teams would watch with interest! Plus my suggestion of successful drivers banned from FP1. Not bad eh?
I think the Friday practice session are fine as they are (in terms of time, and who gets to drive in them). I think that 3 Practice sessions are enough. As far as in-season testing goes, I would like to see this return, but instead of unlimited testing, perhaps keep a limit on the number of days you can test, and also add restrictions of the driver who can test in those days to either reserve drivers or those who have only started a short number of races. Sorry if this has been mentioned already in this thread.
Taking sea-man's first idea, maybe they should just open up Fridays - turn them into test days rather than free practice, with the only stipulation being that the first hour or ninety minutes is for test/reserve drivers only. The tyre allocation could be split with one set of each compound for the test driver, two sets of each compound for the race driver for Friday only (so there's no advantage gained by not running and saving tyres) and eight sets for Saturday/Sunday. I think young driver tests (i.e. for non-contracted drivers) should be held as per the Abu Dhabi test last year - on a Monday after the race but perhaps have two or three of those showcase tests each year.
Sorry, Mr. T. - I missed that one... or maybe I read it and thought, "that's a good idea," and the next morning I woke up thinking it was my own.
genji - you have the consumate skills of a politician. If you can get credit for someone else's ideas go for it !!!
OK guys, what exactly are we to gain here if more testing were allowed, surely the teams at the top now would still be at the top and vice versa, the only tangiable difference would be an increase in the spend.
Surely it would help the teams near but not at the top to close the gap before the championship is done and dusted. That's assuming, of course, that there's not much more performance to find in the RB7 but that there's tons in the MP4-26, the F150ú Italia, the R31 and the MGP W02. There's a reason Christian Horner doesn't approve - he doesn't want the others playing catch-up.
