2023 Azerbaijan Grand Prix - Baku, April 28 - 30

[Mogster]

That just felt flat, a repeat of yesterday. Now FOM have made Saturday a self contained day almost they need to do something more radical to make it interesting at least. One shot qualy? Heat races?

[McL-H]

That just felt flat, a repeat of yesterday. Now FOM have made Saturday a self contained day almost they need to do something more radical to make it interesting at least. One shot qualy? Heat races?

One shot qualifying would be much better. I always enjoyed that.

[littlebigcat]

One shot qualifying would more than likely just result in the same outcome, thats why I thought to introduce some WRCesque Championship leader disadvantage

[chrisc90]

Nothing is realistically going to work. Standalone sprint races arent long enough to be anything meaningful if you mixed the order up. Fastest at the back, reverse grid, lucky dip grid or whatever.

Todays sprint will be a basis for the race tomorrow. and likely finishing positions wont change that much from the actual GP.

Its just a mini GP inside the Quali and race for the main GP. It almost takes away the unknowing-ness of the actual GP as you know what's going to happen, what cars pace will be like etc. Only difference with the GP is strategy and tyre changes to contend with.

Too artificial for my liking. Maybe they should introduce a mandatory pit stop in the sprint to mix things up a bit more. Pirelli bring the 2 softest tyres to the sprint, or even special super soft compounds, and a tyre change must be made within a 5-7 lap pit window. Would at least throw some variables into the mix.

[search]

what's the expectation for the sprint today, tyre wise, by the way? No one in the Top 10 has new softs left, some also only one set of new mediums, which they would like to keep for tomorrow, I guess.

So I think most will go for used mediums from SQ1/2?

[atanatizante]

Yesterday in qualy we got 39 degrees Celsius track temp at the beginning and just 29 at the end of the session ...

Top speeds (some drivers benefited from tow):




Today in SQ we started at 48 degrees Celsius track temp and ended at 50 degrees ...
In addition, all cars got front and rear tyre pressures increased by 1 bar ...

Top speeds, also with some drivers helped by teammates tow (HAM, SAI, STR and so on...):




And the timesheets with tyre laps (sorry it`s just for the first 8 drivers) :

SQ1:



SQ2:



SQ3:



Questions:

1. What are the reasons behind why they didn't schedule a format such as on Friday they do FP1, FP2 and then qualy (something they did in the 90ties)? Then on Saturday they should do SQ at noon followed by the sprint race after some 3 hours. Sunday will be just like it was before ...

2. Why they didn't end up doing SQ1 with the H tyre, SQ2 with the M tyre and SQ3 with the S one?

3. After SQ lap times could we say which teams were more set up towards the race? Such as RB, AM and Merc?

[Mogster]

Bottom line is whatever format you introduce the current cars aren’t really suited to sprint races with lots of wheel to wheel action. They just aren’t that raceable. They are better suited to the semi endurance format of a full GP, they are almost open wheel LMPs.

For sprint races you need shorter much lighter nimble, more raceable cars. Liberty doesn’t seem to have woken up to this fact yet.

[Big Tea]

It's just all a bit pointless?

It either needs the link to the main race, like before. Or needs to be very different.

40 minutes running. Every 10 minutes, bottom 5 are removed. Use whatever tyres you want that you have.

No ending sessions.

Pursuit? Reverse championship order, 5 sec apart set time or number of laps. If you are passed, you are out and stari in that order, if you complete the run that's where you start. It would give the lower cars their time in the spotlight and make the top cars work.

[search]

Ocon will start from pit lane. So unless 10 cars crash out at the start today, he basically can retire the car immediately. There's nothing to gain from running the sprint anyway

[chrisc90]

Ocon will start from pit lane. So unless 10 cars crash out at the start today, he basically can retire the car immediately. There's nothing to gain from running the sprint anyway

They've changed something on rear suspension, so must be of different spec. He will start the race from the pitlane tomorrow too.

Might aswell treat it as a practice session and tweak the car for the race.

[search]

Might aswell treat it as a practice session and tweak the car for the race.

yeah, starting from pitlane tomorrow anyway, they can make as many changes as they want after the sprint. So might make sense indeed to try some things. Didn't think about that.

[Ben1980]

It's just all a bit pointless?

It either needs the link to the main race, like before. Or needs to be very different.

40 minutes running. Every 10 minutes, bottom 5 are removed. Use whatever tyres you want that you have.

No ending sessions.

Pursuit? Reverse championship order, 5 sec apart set time or number of laps. If you are passed, you are out and stari in that order, if you complete the run that's where you start. It would give the lower cars their time in the spotlight and make the top cars work.

I like that aswell.

Something different. Otherwise it's just all very meh.

[Mogster]

It's just all a bit pointless?

It either needs the link to the main race, like before. Or needs to be very different.

40 minutes running. Every 10 minutes, bottom 5 are removed. Use whatever tyres you want that you have.

No ending sessions.

Pursuit? Reverse championship order, 5 sec apart set time or number of laps. If you are passed, you are out and stari in that order, if you complete the run that's where you start. It would give the lower cars their time in the spotlight and make the top cars work.

I like that aswell.

Something different. Otherwise it's just all very meh.

Yes. If we have this Saturday then it needs to be something different. Not a crap version of the main event.

Then there’s the issue that no one really looked engaged this morning, drivers or teams. If the format was something genuinely different it may have resulted in more interest. You may even see the smaller teams putting more effort into the revised format if they have more chance of points.

[CaribouBread]

Logan will not be starting according to Kravitz on the Sky feed. Bit of a shame!

[chrisc90]

Softs expected to last around 12 laps.

Guess everyone will try the medium then