This is designed to give lower teams an advantage, which would make for (potentially) more exciting races. QUALIFYING 1 Teams have 20 mins to set a time, as normal. QUALIFYING 2 (WILDCARD PHASE) At the end of the 20 mins, the first twist kicks in. The bottom 5 are knocked out, with the usual 107% rule applying here. However, drivers positioned 1st to 12th advance to Qualifying 3 whereas Drivers 13th-19th go to qualifying 2. In Q2, the track is open for 10 minutes, in which time teams may only set one time (enough time, easily, to do an out lap, a flying lap, and an in lap). Only two of these can advance to Qualifying Three, with the remaining ones knocked out. QUALIFYING 3 1st - 12th are joined by the two winners of the Q2 'wildcard' stage. So, 14 drivers battle it out for the top 6 places, over 15 mins, to advance to Q5. 1st to 6th automatically are entered to qualifying 5, whilst the remaining drivers go into the qualifying 4 'wildcard phase' QUALIFYING 4 (Wildcard phase) The remaining 8 drivers have 10 mins to set only one time, as per Q2, except this time only 1 driver can advance to Q5. QUALIFYING 5 (Shootout) This would be a fight between 1st and 6th in Q3, and the winner of Qualifying 4, battling it out for the top seven grid positions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This, I believe, would: 1) Make Qualifying more exciting, by adding 2 interesting twists. 2) Allow a lower team to progress to the shootout, by managing tyres correctly, and give them a good advantage (by allowing them to start, say, 5th instead of 14th) and make the race more exciting all round! Thoughts? I'm happy to answer questions, and take suggestions.
Its a good idea! The one thing is it might be a bit confusing for casual viewers who dont watch F1 all the time - and we want to encourage more casual viewing??? Other than that its a decent enough idea!!
The only problem I see is tyres, using to much of them that is, but thats nothing to difficult to fix
Session 1: 1. Vettel 2. Hamilton 3. Button 4. Alonso 5. Webber 6. Massa 7. Schumacher 8. Rosberg 9. Petrov 10. Senna 11. Di Resta 12. Sutil --------------------------------- 13. Barrichello 14. Maldonado 15. Perez 16. Buemi 17. Kobayashi 18. Alguersuari 19. Trulli --------------------------------- 20. Kovaleinen 21. Glock 22. D'ambrosio 23. Riccardio 24. Liuzzi Session 2: Wildcard 13. Barrichello 14. Perez ---------------------------- 15. Maldonado 16. Alguersuari 17. Kobayashi 18. Buemi 19. Trulli Session 3 1. Button (!!) 2. Hamilton 3. Vettel 4. Alonso 5. Webber 6. Petrov -------------------------- 7. Schumacher 8. Rosberg 9. Massa 10. Senna 11. Perez 12. Sutil 13. Di Resta 14. Barrichello Session 4: Wildcard 7. Massa -------------------------- 8. Sutil 9. Schumacher 10. Barrichello 11. Perez 12. Rosberg 13. Di Resta 14. Senna Session 5: 1. Hamilton 2. Petrov 3. Vettel 4. Alonso 5. Massa 6. Button 7. Webber Final Grid: 1. Hamilton 2. Petrov 3. Vettel 4. Alonso 5. Massa 6. Button 7. Webber 8. Sutil 9. Schumacher 10. Barrichello 11. Perez 12. Rosberg 13. Di Resta 14. Senna 15. Maldonado 16. Alguersuari 17. Kobayashi 18. Buemi 19. Trulli 20. Kovaleinen 21. Glock 22. D'ambrosio 23. Riccardio 24. Liuzzi
I completely agree with you. A better tweak in my opinion would be to make it compulsory for drivers to set a time in any session they get through to. Take Monza, Senna beat Di Resta by a tiny margin, and yet failed to set a time at all in Q3. For the sake of one position (that he lost in the race) was it worth it?
This is getting beyond ridiculous now. Schumacher, Sutil and Di Resta all don't set times in Q3. They're gaining an unfair advantage by not using a set of tyres trying to qualify. And for those who argue that they've used an extra set to get through Q2, then two points. Firstly, it's their fault their car isn't quick enough, and secondly what was the point in using the softs to get through to Q3 anyway, if you're not going to do a lap. Time for a rule tweak, I think.
I have always hated this current qualifying format. I miss the old old one with friday practice/qualify, saturday qualify, sunday morning warm-up and sunday race. I have missed a year in between a few times so I completely missed why that format disappeared. Anyone that know? I even liked it better when everyone ran 2 laps each one at the time. This current system is completely pointless. The top 10 fastest in Q1 will in 95% of the times be the exact same that battle it out as top 10 in Q2 and exactly the same in Q3. Really VERY stupid. Better to have 2 open practice sessions when people can sneak in their best time whenever they want imho. Or am i just old school?
Regarding the original idea, time would be a massive factor. You have an hour of track time, plus you'd need time at the end of each session for drivers to complete the lap they're on and then an inlap and a breather between each session. You'd end up with a two hour qualifying session. Then tyres become a factor, off the top of my head I think drivers could be setting up to seven times, which would use the full allocation of primes AND options. Increasing the allocation wouldn't work because it's already a logistical nightmare for Pirelli who have to bring almost 1000 tyres to an event. I don't agree with this, they're just cancelling out an unfair disadvantage they'd have as a result of the ridiculous rule whereby the top ten have to start the race on the tyres they set their time on. If they scrapped that rule I'm sure most drivers would do a run. It's difficult to make it compulsory for someone to run because people sometimes have to sit out the session with unreliability, I think it was Kobayashi who had to start from the pit lane in China because he had a problem in Q1.
How about drivers who dont set a lap in any session (and haven't crashed/ broken down) fail the 107% rule? And yes the tyre starting rule needs to go.
I agree and it's also frustrating to less action on the track because teams are more concerned about saving tyres for the race. I think one simple solution should make things a lot fairer: the return of qualifying tyres. - Drivers wouldn't need to save tyres - Q3 tyre rule wouldn't apply, therefore no advantage for drivers starting 11th - Unlucky punctures in qualifying wouldn't affect race chances - Alguersuari wont get an advantage for his **** qualifying performances
I can see where the 'unfair advantage' argument can be made, but as it stands the person in 11th has an unfair advantage over the driver in 10th as they can use whatever tyres they want to. Maybe they should change the rules to everyone has to use the tyres the set their times on or no one.
I wonder how many of the lower teams would choose not to qualify at all if you enforced same tyre on everyone. I'd say use same tyre but bring back the old format with 2 open sessions where you could set a time anytime you wanted.
