New qualifying format...

[skoop]

as far as i know they blocked the hybrid format because they want last year's qualification system back

[basti313]

It's just a rumour but it makes sense: Ecclestone had even dumber idea with some time penalties/reverse grid type of thing.

I do not see what should have been worse with an idea of time penalties. Of course not 5sec time penalty for the WC leader, but something reasonable like 2sec (track depended), that puts him out of the top 10.
No disadvantages, but many benefits to the current format:
Time penalty is Hollywood....but so is the current elimination format.
Time penalty would force the Mercs and Ferraris to drive the **** out of their cars. and not save tires in Q3.
The only thing that spiced up the race in Oz regarding P1 to P4 was the bad start of the Mercs. Without that bad start and Ham/Ros leading...boring race with Mercs disappearing at the front, Ferraris following without chances to get past and then nothing.

I really think, that if they want more Hollywood, time penalties would be the way to go as it would really spice things up in the race.

[Moose]

It's just a rumour but it makes sense: Ecclestone had even dumber idea with some time penalties/reverse grid type of thing.

I do not see what should have been worse with an idea of time penalties. Of course not 5sec time penalty for the WC leader, but something reasonable like 2sec (track depended), that puts him out of the top 10.

What's unreasonable is that this is a sport, not a show. Sports don't penalise people for doing well, they put everyone on a level playing field and let whoever wins win.

[zac510]

What's unreasonable is that this is a sport, not a show. Sports don't penalise people for doing well, they put everyone on a level playing field and let whoever wins win.

That's an old fashioned view. Anything that's competing for your attention is actually entertainment. When deciding how to spend your Sunday afternoon; watch a movie, watch F1 (or any sport), stare at facebook for 2 hours, go to the pub. It all comes back to how you spend your time: entertainment. All of these activities are competing to be more interesting and more entertaining.

[basti313]

It's just a rumour but it makes sense: Ecclestone had even dumber idea with some time penalties/reverse grid type of thing.

I do not see what should have been worse with an idea of time penalties. Of course not 5sec time penalty for the WC leader, but something reasonable like 2sec (track depended), that puts him out of the top 10.

What's unreasonable is that this is a sport, not a show. Sports don't penalise people for doing well, they put everyone on a level playing field and let whoever wins win.

I do not disagree with that, but at the moment the driver championship it is not "sports" at all. The best Merc driver will win...
Furthermore we have a stupid Hollywood-like qualifying in order to spice things up. Why not use a better Hollywood-like qualifying which really spices things up and does not only wait for errors.

[hollus]

Interesting to see that after the "debacle", I am not the only one saying that there may be some positives to this. Some tweaking might be needed, maybe an extra minute (does TV really need to capture the initial outlaps?) or elimination starting later and every 60 seconds. But was the overall order, or the number of laps that different from some qualis last year? Or was even Q3 that much worse than some Q3s last year when after the banker laps the Ferraris could not touch the Mercedes and could not be touched by anyone else, yet they all went out again and changed nothing? Or was it that different from those Q3s where Hamilton was ahead, Rosberg failed to improve and Hamilton aborted his second lap?

Teams could choose (takes experience) to get creative. For example: Fuel for 5 laps (not so much weight as five normal laps anyways) and try to get the banker good enough to only use one set of tires anyways. If through your banker lap you notice a problem or just are too slow, pit immediately, just change tires and go out again. You've saved one lap plus the refueling time and half of the life a set of tires, and you are setting that second fast lap later in the session on a faster track while other teams are "inevitably" too late for a second lap.
This system allows for some level of gambling, some level of creative thinking and some level of driver judgement.
And still, at any given time, rewards the fastest teams on track at the right times. Not so different from past qualis in Monaco, is it?

It does introduce some randomness, but guess which is the most popular sport in the world? One where a good team is likely to score, say, 1.5 +/- 2.0 goals and a bad team is likely to score 1.0 +/- 2.0 goals in any given game. And yet, somehow, at the end of the season the good teams consistently outscore the bad teams. Last time I checked, F1 has 21 races of which Qs are only a minor part.

I for one am happy that they are giving this system a second chance. One can always go back and no, this cannot kill the sport. Bad sundays can, though.

[Manu_Forti]

What was wrong with qualifying being an hour long and the drivers being able to set their times when they want. I remember the mad scramble when the track was at its fastest in the last few minutes being great fun. This elimination crap really hacks me off, fail to make it on your one or two laps or have an off and its game over. Just mandate that all drivers must set at least one flying lap in each quarter of the hour to guarantee track action. Simple.

There is a lot of F1 today that could do with a rapid application of the KISS* principle. Been watching for nearly thirty years and its honestly getting to the point where I am finding other motor sports like Moto GP vastly more watchable.

* = Keep. It. Simple. Stupid.

[zac510]

Just mandate that all drivers must set at least one flying lap in each quarter of the hour to guarantee track action. Simple.

If you think they won't just do a 2minute 'flying' lap on worn old tyres in each of the first 3 15 minute blocks then you're kidding yourself. It's not simple just because you wrote Simple with a capital letter and put a period at the end. There is always some other issue or way to exploit the rule that they need to defend against with more rules unfortunately.

[hollus]

... Just mandate that all drivers must set at least one flying lap in each quarter of the hour to guarantee track action. Simple.

Change "quarter of the hour" for "twenty minutes" and you've got last years Q format.

FWIW, I think the main point here is to shuffle Sunday a bit. I think that is actually a good idea. For people that think that any amount of shuffling is bad, then of course almost everything in the new format is contrived and unholy. They couldn't have made it much more complex than they already did.

[foxmulder_ms]

Well, we probably would give you a warning and a slap on the wrist for profanity, but we could hardly ban someone for basically making sense.

Up to you if you deem profanity worth a warning and a slap on the wrist. As a moderator I will not encourage it, though we life in a free world to make choices and accept their consequences .

We're talking hardcore swearing here. Because honestly, this pissed me off enough to make me rage for a good few hours. High blood pressure and everything.

F1 is slowly being destroyed into oblivion and there's nothing I can do about it.

We can already see how bad the state of Formula 1 is in right now you only need to watch Ted's Notebook to go coo coo

Ted Kravitz notebook: 6 minutes of actual technical analysis, however the next 20 or so minutes its filled with irrelevant garbage "oh look its Jean Eric Vergnes partner, she looks stunning in those tight jeans"
"here we have a chap who seems to want to get my attention for some unknown reason hmmm"
"Who were we talking about? Was it Force India? Ferrari...no we already did them, oh well I'll get back to what I wanted to talk about in part 2, I was distracted by this very interesting jacket that fellow was wearing"

Bernie needs to be thrown into a ditch and the FIA needs a reset (the next FIFA?), why is there a race director well into his 60's is there no one else who has aspirations to be race director? An FIA media manager who's wife is a reserve / test driver yet has virtually no skill sets?

It's a disaster waiting to happen

Ted's notebook is the BEST thing in F1 right now. =D> =D>

[nevill3]

I guess that the new format gives RedBull and McLaren the best chance of scoring points because only the top 8 start on used tyres and they are more likely to be in the 9, 10 & 11th slots with fresh tyres. If the old system had come in then it would have been the top 10 so by blocking this hybrid they get to forstall any changes to maximise any advantage this system gives them.

[mika vs michael]

The system is flawed. Qualifying should be about low fuel runs on the fastest tyre. This awful system will lead to teams filling their cars with fuel and doing circles around the track...So if they want this they can instead have a 10-15 laps race to determine the starting grid. No tyre change allowed and no refuelling of course. let them race flat out for 10-15 laps. and have them start that sprint race in the opposite order they finished the previous gp race. But this is not qualifying...

[strad]

What was wrong with qualifying being an hour long and the drivers being able to set their times when they want. I remember the mad scramble when the track was at its fastest in the last few minutes being great fun. This elimination crap really hacks me off, fail to make it on your one or two laps or have an off and its game over. Just mandate that all drivers must set at least one flying lap in each quarter of the hour to guarantee track action. Simple. .......

.
Well those days were great, sometimes.
However those were also the days of using "special" qualifying cars and engines.
Hell they weren't even legal in some cases. Brakes that were too small, superlight parts that wouldn't be safe in the race, well unless maybe if you were Chapman, engines that were set on full grenade, they even had special lightweight wheels and even if you're in favor of qualifying lightweight specials, that was part of what made things too expensive.

[basti313]

The system is flawed. Qualifying should be about low fuel runs on the fastest tyre. This awful system will lead to teams filling their cars with fuel and doing circles around the track...

Why should they???
At the moment the top teams fill up for 5 laps to do a second attempt immediately, because their times are sufficient to get to Q2 on a used set of tires or on more fuel. The slow runners can not do this, they need a lap on fresh tires and low fuel to have a chance for Q2. They either have the chance to nail the first lap or to go out when the fast teams have done their attempt (so round about 3min after the start of Q1. Everything else does not make sense.

[Ozan]

Q1+Q2 elimination system with Q3 push it to the end with special pink qualification tyres that need to be returned after Q3. what do you think?