Sebastian Vettel in China Q3; he’s left the pits early and
is building up to what will surely be one of his renowned all out qualifying
laps. The Red Bull hasn’t been the fastest at this track, but that shouldn’t
stop him going for it. Ok he’s about to go for it… oh, he’s trundling down the
pit lane.
It’s not the best sight in the world to see Formula 1’s
current world champion not bothering to set a qualifying time. Yes, you don’t
win any points on a Saturday, so if you think you’re strategy for the race is
best served by not bothering then that’s what you do, but it’s not exactly the
best advertisement for the sport. And it’s happened plenty of times over the
last few years.
I was flicking through the latest edition of F1 Racing
magazine yesterday in which there was an interview with Pirelli’s motorsport
boss Paul Hembery. Now leaving aside the wider issues regarding the tyres at
the moment, he was asked what he would do to ensure that all the drivers who
make it through to Q3 set a representative lap time to which he replied that
they have actually offered to make ‘bespoke qualifying tyres’ like they had in
the 80s.
What this means is basically they’d make special tyres for
the top 10 which would give enough extra sticky grip for one completely flat
out lap. It would negate any impact on race strategy because presumably the top
10 would be allowed to start on whatever tyres the like; currently they have to
start on the tyres they qualify on.
With this solution, I think you’d have to make two sets of
qualifying tyres so each driver can have two attempts and also to make sure the
full ten minute session is adequately filled with cars for the Television
audience.
Other solutions I’ve heard of would be to introduce the 107%
rule for Q3 which means they have to qualifying within 107% of the fastest time.
This one actually seems to be the simplest answer but of course in Formula 1 nothing
is ever simple, sometimes to its detriment, what’s wrong with just forcing them
to set a time? Currently we have the 107% rule only running in Q1 so just in
case Marussia or Caterham are particularly poor on a certain track they won’t be
a moving road block on race day.
Perhaps though there is a better way to incentivise the
teams and make for a better television experience. What I would do is this:
First of all I would cut Q1 by five minutes, giving all the
teams 15 minutes to set a time in the opening session. It would probably force
a lot of teams to send their drivers out earlier, thereby getting more cars out
on track sooner without having to spent the first few minutes waiting to see
something. You’d still lose six cars from this session.
Again Q2 would follow the same process we have now to
eliminate six cars over 15 minutes. However the top 10 in this session which
advance to Q3 would become more important than simple progression.
Here is how Q3 would work for me. I think this qualifying
format is the best they’ve had, but I did like the element they had a few years
ago where you’d get one lap to go all out to win. When doing that with the
entire field it got a little dull as you waited for the top drivers for ages,
but when it’s just the top 10 you’ve got the top guys already.
Of course you have to take television schedules into account
and sending one car at a time would take a fair amount of time but having saved
five minutes from Q1, there is a little time to play with to do a variation on
this.
So anyway, if they were to produce special qualifying tyres
I’d give the top 10 one set. Then starting with the 10th fastest from
Q2 I’d release them like this. 10 to 7 would be released at 15 second intervals
to go and set their laps. The intervals are there so that the TV cameras can
pick up at least a portion of everyone’s laps. Once these four have set their
times, you’d then release cars 6 to 4 at 20 second intervals, before finally
doing the same with cars 3 to 1, a climactic top 3 showdown.
Then just to make sure they’re not going to have it easy on
Sunday, they all must start on the softer option tyre, so that at least those
who qualified outside the top 10 can still make progress with a different
strategy if they so wish.
Of course this does mean that the top 10 will all have an
extra set of tyres to play with seen as they’ll have special ones for the final
session so those who qualified outside the top 10 won’t have an advantage like
can happen at the moment.
So there’s some pluses and minuses to this scheme, but I
think it’s a good alternative to one that currently allows them to sit in their
garages for ages and perhaps not even bother to set a time and also good for
the trackside and TV audience. Well it’s this or just make the rule that forces
them to go out.
photo from autosport.com
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