JULY 16, 2004

The face of F1 qualifying

Attempts to change the way Formula 1 cars qualify before the German Grand Prix have failed, but that is really not a surprise as there is a strong body of opinion in F1 circles that although no-one is happy with the current format, the new one being proposed is really not much better, because of the controversial idea to aggregate the lap times.

There is a growing body of opinion which is indicating that there was not really very much wrong with the qualifying as it used to be with an hour on Friday and an hour on Saturday and that if the small teams suffer from not getting any TV coverage they can do what they always did before which was to run in the early part of the sessions. The one thing which might be needed is a stipulation that all the cars have to run at least once in the first part of the session, thus ensuring that the TV show is interesting.

The actual process of making changes to the regulations is not as simple as some seem to believe as it needs more than just an agreement between all the teams in order, if only because the Formula 1 Commission has to be convened to discuss the matter.