28 Cars on the track in Free Practice

[shiny side up!]

I was just looking at the live timing screen from the Formula1 website, and it struck me that including all of the 3rd cars today there are a total of 28 cars on the track... 28, a fair number more than the official limit for an actual grid size.

That got me to thinking... FIA claim that it is not practical to increase grid sizes due to infrastructure limits at some tracks... that there would not be enough garage space, pit row too tight, etc... but don't they currently disprove that at every GP with all of the 3rd cars?

I suppose it could be argued that 2 3rd cars take up less space than 1 additional 2 car team because the third cars share garages with their 2 raceday siblings. Still... the action in the pits is a lot heavier during Free Practice than it ever is during a race. Not necessarily due to actual pit stops with refueling and tire changes, but in sheer volume of traffic it is certainly much worse...

[FPV GTHO]

They dont disprove anything as every teams got 3 garages regardless of if theyre allowed the Friday car or not. Its the teams taking up the room, not the cars themselves

[ASCII Man]

Well, if it's the teams that are taking up the space, then why not limit the paddock space available to teams so that more teams can participate?

[avsfan733]

Originally Posted by ASCII Man

Well, if it's the teams that are taking up the space, then why not limit the paddock space available to teams so that more teams can participate?

I've been saying that for a while. 28 cars can obviously be on track together and i doubt 30 would make much of a difference...much cleaner number 30. Make the actual drivers run on friday if they want track information I mean thats what we all pay to go see not some third drivers from the second rate teams while the top runners all spend the majority of the time in the garage

[maltafan]

Originally Posted by ASCII Man

Well, if it's the teams that are taking up the space, then why not limit the paddock space available to teams so that more teams can participate?

And would it be an option to have 3 drivers per team?

[kipper]

Originally Posted by avsfan733

I've been saying that for a while. 28 cars can obviously be on track together and i doubt 30 would make much of a difference...much cleaner number 30.

I'd argue that the number of cars that can run on the track at anyone time and the number of teams are not neccesarily the same issue. As has been pointed out, all teams are allocated garage space for three cars regardless of whether they use the car. Therefore, if (race) cars were increased to 28, this would require an additional space for 9 cars, which is probably beyond capabilities for some pit lanes. This could be counteracted by the banning of spare cars, however, this is likely to be unpopular with spectators, if say Alonso, when making one of his limited laps on Friday was to write his car off and would then be out of action for the rest of the weekend.

[CamF1]

Didn't Max say it was also to do with safety? Did he mean in the pitlane?