AUGUST 25, 2005

Talks about qualifying

The Formula 1 team bosses met in Turkey to try to work out what to do about qualifying next year and the opinions seem to be somewhat split, unusual in this age of detente, although the general feeling now appears to be to maintain the status quo with one or two modifications. The problem is that at the moment the team bosses do not agree on what to do to spice things up now that it is too late for the designers to change their cars for next year.

There seems to be a movement towards an arrangement in which the qualifying order on Saturday would be established with a session which would see the cars running with low fuel and new tyres. This would probably be on Friday afternoon but could also be the fourth session on Saturday. The running order for this session would be established based not on the result of the last race but rather on the championship positions at that moment, obviously reversed so that the slower cars ran first.

Qualifying would remain as it is on Saturday afternoon with the cars running once again with race tyres and fuel loads. This would mean that drivers would get a chance to run the cars as fast as they will go, which would keep fans happy rather than having qualifying sessions which are fundamentally meaningless. It would also offer the teams more chance to calculate the fuel loads of the rival cars.

The teams are currently going through the process of trying to decide what they want and this will then be presented to FIA President Max Mosley when everyone gets together on August 31 at the Automobile Club di Milano.