For all F1’s flapping about trying to fix its occasionally boring races - and they are
much more occasional than you might think, given all the bluster about it. We have a
couple of dull races in a row and we’re ready to cast the whole sport into the sea.
Anyway, for all the worrying about how to fix F1, most people agree that the current
qualifying format is actually pretty decent - perhaps the best the sport has ever had.
In the past we’ve had qualifying formats that have included:
Having a one hour session in which you have twelve laps to set your best time. This is
fairly pure, except that - as the track grip tend`e would be staring at an empty circuit
for up to half an hour every Saturday. Very frustrating.
We had one lap shootout qualifying in which cars went out in turn and only had one chance
to set a perfect lap. The audience got to see every single full lap and there was no
margin for error - it was pretty thrilling. The problems here were that - as mentioned
a moment ago - the track improved over time so the first driver to go out would tend to
have the track in the worst condition and the last driver would have the grippiest run.
Not as pure. To counter this, there was a first qualifying
session (run in championship order so the leading car was disadvantaged) which would
then decide the real qualifying session which would be run in the order set by the first
qualifying session. So the first quali session was just to get
you the best slot in the shoot out for the grid.
The other set back was that if the weather was changeable, there might be a massive disadvantage
to those scheduled to go out during much wetter conditions.
F1 being F1, they did play with this format a little bit (sometimes with no thought at
all). As in 2016, they tried a tweak that was dropped after just a few races in which
they would add the times from the two qualifying sessions together to decide the grid order.
This ended up being a disaster - partly as the first quali was on Saturday and the second
quali on Sunday so broadcasters often didn’t cover second quali and no one would bother
watching the first quali as it didn’t give you the final grid order.
It was also harder to follow as you had to keep up with times added together while watching
hot laps. Too complicated, badly organised. Which brings us to current qualifying - the
knockout format. This works well - the three short slots forces all the cars to go out
so we’re rarely left watching an empty track. We get to focus on the smaller teams for some
of the time, watching to see who’ll be able to make it through each stage. It solves a
lot of problems and ends up with, for all intents and purposes, a fair and representative
grid with just a little drama thrown in. It’s been given little tweaks over the last
15 years but no one really complains about this format. Saturdays are interesting.
So why do F1 keep reaching towards qualifying when they want to shake things up?
It’s partly because they don’t want to mess with the race itself. The race is the
‘pure’ part of the weekend. You don’t want Sundays to go all Mario Kart.
On the other hand, F1 notice how thrilled everyone is when we get a race on the back
of a mixed up grid. If due to weather or misfortune, the front running cars start from the back
or the middle of the pack, we get a much more fun race as they have to battle through the
field instead of disappearing off from the front.
So F1 can’t help but want to engineer that scenario somehow, by adding more “chance”
elements to qualifying. In unpurifying qualifying, they think they can spice up the racing.
Which brings us to the murmurings of F1 wanting to use the double-races this season to try
a reverse grid sprint race qualifying format. That’s a lot of words, isn’t it.
Now, I agree. Reverse grid races (though a lot fun) are pretty impure and are kind of
overly punishing of success. But that’s if we’re talking about the actual grand
prix race. For a qualifying race, this is a bit different.
The idea is that on Saturday we’d have a short 30 minute sprint race with a starting
grid in reverse championship order. The results of this race would translate to
the grid for the real grand prix on Sunday. No idea if there would be pitstops or not,
but you’d assume not as cars can regularly go 30 minutes without stopping and losing
20-25 seconds to stop would be a big disadvantage so maybe just a flat out sprint with no stops
would be in order. 30 minutes is a good time for this. It’s
long enough that you’d think the best cars could work their way to the front - or hopefully
most of the way there - but not so long that it becomes a sure thing.
Mistakes will be punished. The championship leaders will have to do up to 19 overtakes
- on slower cars, yes - but slower cars that don’t want to give up any position. Every
battle will be valuable. I think… this could be quite fun. It’s
not pure by any means but in a season when we’re going to have at least two - and possible
up to FOUR, if rumours are to be believed - races at the same venues, why not have some
fun with the format and try something out on the ‘shadow companion’ grand prix weekend?
The worst result is that we have a mixed up grid for the Sunday Grand Prix or that we
have a Saturday crash that puts a championship contender on the back foot - but everyone
is in the same boat here. The rules will be the same for everyone. It’ll be part of
the challenge. And if it really sucks, they can just switch
back to the normal format. I don’t believe this should be the qualifying
format going forward into years to come but I am very keen to see this play out. F1 never
gets to experiment and it might finally have that chance. Let’s see how it goes.