CONFIRMED : Qualifying changed to a single session (merged)

[Knowlesy]

Yes, F1 is run by a complete nutter!

[Kicking-back]

Originally Posted by PaulSands

Is it just me or does Max Mosley talk the biggest load of b*****ks.
This is a quote from him reported on the BBC Sport site
"If you follow a particular driver and you know he's going to be on pole you might change your plans for Sunday. But on the other hand if you know he's at the back of the grid you might go and do something completely different"
What the f......and this man is in charge!!??

Crazy as it may seem, there are a lot of casual fans like that.


"Schumacher crashed out, so I switched off". - That sort of thing.


Max is not an idiot, and hearing people continually saying that is a bit tiresome

[Gt_R]

Hmmm... we had plenty of such bull's poo last year.... you know..Ferrari's winning, so let's switch off... Michael's winning so we switch off...

kinda stupid comments it may seem from Max, but hey, that's the way many people work.

Problem is, half of them don't keep to their promise.

[BootsOntheSide]

Viewing figures are always higher when it's closer, and they're currently higher than ever in Spain and lower than usual in France (despite Renault's success), so maybe Max's mentality isn't as stupid as some of you think.

[Gt_R]

If it seems off topic, it's basically saying that many people can't seperate watching F1 and supporting a driver/team, they complain and switch off when their guy ain't winning and seem to have difficulty appreciating other drivers/team's success but their own fav.

The new qualifying may not be the best solution, but it'd be less confusing for casual fans. The bad thing is that we, tv-viewers or on-track spectators, will get to see an hour less of F1 cars on the track.

But at least we go to bed on saturday knowing who's on pole.

Hopefully, it works out ok..i still don't like this system of dictating drivers when to run with changing weather etc... preferring teams/drivers choosing when to run their qual within a time period.. but heck..it isn't easy that everyone agrees to improve the show.. so i'd just bear with it.

[Kicking-back]

Originally Posted by Gt_R

The new qualifying may not be the best solution, but it'd be less confusing for casual fans. The bad thing is that we, tv-viewers or on-track spectators, will get to see an hour less of F1 cars on the track.

Not really, because we didn't get to see second qualifying anyway!

[Don K]

OK.

So the bad thing is that we, tv-spectators in the important countries, will get to see an hour less of F1 cars on track.

[BootsOntheSide]

Agreed Gt_R, wet weather situations are the only time where one-shot qualifying doesn't really work. World Superbikes switches to a 12-lap 1-hour session, which F1 could theoretically do, but there are a few issues with this under a Parc Fermé situation. One is that running more than once would lose a team 2 laps of fuel. Also, a car which is on its in-lap would be crusiing far slower than usual, and physics and history combine to tell us that when a car hits one that's much slower from behind, the faster car leaves the ground. With reduced visability that could be catastrophic. Also, if a driver does his firt run on wets, whould he be able to later switch to Inters?

Which countries have showed both qualifying session live on free-to-air TV Don? I know Britain and Germany haven't.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by PaulSands

Is it just me or does Max Mosley talk the biggest load of b*****ks.
This is a quote from him reported on the BBC Sport site
"If you follow a particular driver and you know he's going to be on pole you might change your plans for Sunday. But on the other hand if you know he's at the back of the grid you might go and do something completely different"
What the f......and this man is in charge!!??

It wouldn't make any difference to me, but I can see what he is saying. If Jenson was on pole and the Brits knew about it then I can see more tuning in (in this country).

The key is we have it settled on Saturday, which I think was the main problem here. The papers can write their stories and we can have a proper build up. In addition it gives more point to any Saturday qualifying program as you get to see a report.

I don't like single lap Q, but they weren't addressing that issue. Understand what they were trying to achieve and you'll see that they have a achieved it. There are still more general questions about Q, but they couldn't be sorted now mid-season for all the reasons mentioned earlier in this thread. However they were never trying to solve these. It was never a question about fuel or no fuel.

As for no running on Sunday morning. That was an issue that was far outwieghed by the Saturday issue. For a change to happen mid season the choice was clear. Either what we had or change to what they are going to. Again for the reasons already stated. The lack of a result on Saturday along with the lack of TV coverage for the session that provided the result far outweighed making the drivers do a total of 20 flying laps altogether on Sunday morning. A simple choice.

[Pitstop]

Originally Posted by Kicking-back

Not in the important countries!

Please KB, could you tell us which are the important countries?

[JeremySmith]

Originally Posted by Pitstop

Please KB, could you tell us which are the important countries?

Yes come on KB I will not sleep tonight not knowing which countries are important and which are not

[Logrence]

It was all shown live in Germany and I very much enjoyed watching the second qualifying, but now I'm back in the UK and can't see it (curse that pesky ITV) I'm against the second session and would like to see it change. I suspect many people in F1 would like to see the old-style hour session with 12 laps but are held back by stone-age machismo.

[WebberForWDC]

I don't think 12 lap qualy is that great anyway. It's an hour session, but there is only action for 20 minutes! It may as well be a 20 minute session! And of course it used to lend itself to expensive qualifying parts, and tyres that had an extra-special performance on first 3 laps.

I don't buy the longer session means less traffic (therefore a 20 min session is bad) excuse as all the cars go out at the same time at the end of the session. Yes I accept that doesn't include Minardi and Jordan, and the 12lap system is not great for them is it? they have to go out early, "hope" for some TV time and then they don't get to participate in frantic lapping for the best grid spots... Also you might say 20min is bad in cases of bad weather as a 1hr allows the teams to wait and run if it clears up for a while (or run early if it's about to rain) during the longer session... but that is not such a big issue.

I think if they go for a one-lap one session on race fuel qualifying, they may as well have a 20min warm-up with low fuel to decide starting positions in the qualifying. Yes I accept that's flawed in that: they would be reluctant to run if they have to put extra use on their race set of tyres (so the rule could be to continue with the Sat. Practice set), and depending on gap from warm-up to qualy then the cars that run early in qualy have an advantage as their cars and tyres will still be warm from the warm-up. I dunno.

[Gt_R]

Well..i get to watch 2nd quals live either, so i'd definitely miss one hour less of F1 cars running around.

That said. Frank Williams and Paul Stoddart hinted at more changes for next season in terms of qualifyings, while Michael Schumacher said that he hope that whatever the system decided, he hopes for the benefit of everyone it would stay put and not kept changing.

[Pingguest]

I think the best possible qualifying would be just one 60 minutes qualifying, with unlimited amount of laps, tyres and engines and without the parc fermé-regulations. That would be nice. Drivers won't stay in the pit, because they would waste laps.

With the limit of 12 laps drivers stayed in the pit lane, because they didn't want to waste laps. That was a problem.

[JohnSSC]

I have really enjoyed reading this!

When the changes for this season were announced, they were reviled and of course now that this is "official" the "new" system is also being savaged!

It is qualifying for a race, not life or death. All this talk about being "fair" to the slower teams or whatever is just plain silly. Racing has always been about the fastest doing the best and the slowest struggling to catch up. If you want to be "fair" by tilting the table for the slower teams than you are automatically being unfair to the faster teams who have worked hard to be fastest.

As K-B was saying this system is just as fair as any other and is possibly better from a performance viewpoint: put the pressure on the teams and drivers to do their very best over one lap. If F1 is the "pinnacle" than the stakes should reflect that! Just keep it simple. The car should be in race trim with whatever fuel load the team chooses to put in.

As for the fans being cheated somehow then the promoters should put other races on the venue.

[Don K]

I think they should change the way in which they have a break after every 5 drivers.

It is OK as long as there are 20 drivers.
The drivers who get the advantage of being allowed to run slow towards the pits, are the numbers 1 and 6. This is only a small unequality.

But currently, when there are 18 cars, they do:
18-14
13-9
8-4
3-1
So numbers 1 and 4 get the avantage. This is unnecessary.

With a 2 car grid or a 16 car grid, things are even worse (with 1 and 3 or 1 and 2 getting the advantage.

I think they should group them into groups of 5 starting from the final 5 cars to drive.
For a 18 car grid this would give us:
18-16
15-11
10-6
5-1.
For a 20 car grid, a 16 car grid, or a 22 car grid, we sould also get:
...
10-6
5-1.

It would be only a very minor change, but it would make the sessions easier to grasp (10 cars to go, 5 cars to go).

[Adam43]

I don't think 10 cars to go, 5 cars to go is any harder to understand than 8 cars to go, 4 cars to go. Unless you need to use all your fingers to count. If people don't understand a little thing like that then they don't deserve to watch F1.

[Don K]

Originally Posted by AdamAshmore

I don't think 10 cars to go, 5 cars to go is any harder to understand than 8 cars to go, 4 cars to go. Unless you need to use all your fingers to count. If people don't understand a little thing like that then they don't deserve to watch F1.

But with 7 cars to go, 2 cars to go car 8, car 3 and car 1 get a definite fuel advantage over car 2, car 4, car 5, car 6, car 7, car 9, etc. Which can be quite disturbing. And the number of cars starting in that particular qualifying session decide which cars will get the advantage.

If you group starting from the end of qualifying, you know in advantage that it will be car 6 and car 1.

-----------------

Of course, it would be even better if there would be some time limit for every last car (from each group of 5) within which they should reach the entrance of the pits.

That would entirely take away this random advantage.

[Don K]

Another simple way to make the sunday qualifying easier to understand, would have been to simply include all cars that sill had to run in the position shown.

---

For instance, suppose that 15 of the 20 cars have completed their sunday lap.
In that case, the "fastest" driver (lets call him A should be shown as p6.

nr 5 car (let's call him B) beats the pole:
p5: B
p6: A

nr 4 car (C) goes in between:
p4: B
p5: C
p6: A

nr 3 car (D) goes of track:
p3: B
p4: C
p5: A

nr 2 car (E) beats the pole:
p2: E
p3: B
p4: C
p5: A

etcetera.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by Don K

Of course, it would be even better if there would be some time limit for every last car (from each group of 5) within which they should reach the entrance of the pits.

That would entirely take away this random advantage.

Well I wasn't really talking about your problem here. My point was that groups of 5 and groups of 4 makes little difference.

IMO there isn't really a problem. The difference in the amount of fuel that can be saved on the slow lap and the slower lap is not really that important. The slow lap saves so much anyway it is not like completing a lap a race speeds. So you can only hope to save a tiny fraction of a race lap more than someone else. This will be a tiny weight that will probably correspond to thousandths of a second, if that.

If you want a siginficant 'random' advantage then what about lining up on the racing line of the grid. Odds often have an advatage on evens. Sometimes 3rd is better than 3nd.

As for your easier way to understand. I get it, but your need for the comprehensive example shows that it isn't that simple. I find the current system very easy to understand. At the whatever point in time they have set achieed that position, then the others slow in around them. It also hammers home that you may knock someone down a place on the grid.

Again it is another case of if you can't understand it then there is no hope for you and you won't get F1 anyway!

[slicktoast]

IMHO, I liked the aggregate qualifying BUT I would've rather seen it all done on Saturday. 1 flat-out Q1 and 1 race-fuel Q2 on just one day. Now we won't see any flat-out (read low fuel) laps.

[Pitstop]

Oh Adam, I do uderstand it all. I just want to know from K-B, if I live in an 'important county' or not, please ?

[Dutton]

The Sunday morning session system was confidently predicted to produce exactly the problems that it did, so the fact they have now resolved this issue is good. It means people can moan about the next thing on the list, which allows for a nice "change of scenery" so to type.

I got to see the Sunday session before the race (not live though, just shown in the hour preceding the race), so from that perspective it was actually quite cool - beat the hell out of listening to "experts" talk nonsense around a table. At least when they talked rubbish whilst showing the session I got a little bit less annoyed with them. For the people in countries who never got (well GET, until the qualy is done tom) to see the session at all, well this is where the big improvement comes: that must be rather annoying.

The current (rather come Nurb) set-up is not perfect, but I am never going to be a particular fan of one-lap/fuel level etc. Therefore, allowing for the reality that this is the dominant theory at present, then what has been arranged will do. I wouldn't complain about a Friday session, ala 2003, for it lets the weekend start earlier. That was one of the few benefits I saw in the change of format in 2003 (being in the UK), but now it is not too much of an issue since I get to see practice here regardless.

As Adam said earlier: viewing the changes IN THE CONEXT OF WHAT WAS AIMING TO BE ACHIEVED, there has been a resounding success.

I still think if the "change over" point for engines was switched to just before the race, rather than the start of the race weekend, then we could have a valid 12-lap system.

However, that is for another time.

[Don K]

Originally Posted by AdamAshmore

Well I wasn't really talking about your problem here. My point was that groups of 5 and groups of 4 makes little difference.

I wasn't talking about groups of 4.

I was talking about the placement of the incomplete group of 5.

If the cars are divided into groups of 5, and we need to have one incomplete group (of 4, 3, 2 or 1 remaining cars),
we should have that group at the start of the session.
Not at the end of the session (where the most important part of the session takes place).