Poll: Is the 2016 F1 Qualifying format better than the 2015 format?

[SS-89]

The races have been pretty decent this year so far. Having 3 tyre compounds available has made a big difference (obviously, because its along the lines of what everyone has been asking for for years anyway ).#

Its a shame that most people will be turning away based on the steaming **** that is the continual qualifying debacle.

I have to agree I think this year both races have been pretty good.

 

[EddScott]

Bahrain was the first time I watched the new system.

At first I actually thought it was alright. As cars went faster, the slower driver was ultimately knocked out. It doesn't really affect the front of the grid so to mix up the front, it hasn't worked. It has made the bottom end of the grid more interesting though.

However, with the timing as it is, the last 3 or 4 minutes are all but useless as there isn't enough time to get out and do a hot lap.

I did think though that in some cases, where a car is getting 3 or 4 cars away from being knocked out, the team should send it back out to try and prevent it being relegated.

 

[JeditOjanen]

I did think though that in some cases, where a car is getting 3 or 4 cars away from being knocked out, the team should send it back out to try and prevent it being relegated.

The problem is that with a 90-second window, you don't have the time to do that. Two cars pull themselves out of the danger zone and the driver who was in 10th but is now in 12th is out. Depending on the circuit and the timings, the driver now in 11th may also be out even if he's on the track. It's a stupid system, highlighted by Frank Williams sending his cars out onto an empty track in Bahrain literally so the viewers would have something to look at.

 

[MissChief]

At Spa it's going to be even worse. You could have ALREADY STARTED you lap and be knocked out before you get a chance to finish it.

 

[smr]

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-set-to-revert-to-2015-qualifying-format-685408/

THANK God!!!! Happy days.

As has been said - the three tyre compounds are creating wonderful races this year - that was the only thing needed. Now we can go back to normal!

 

[cuke2u]

Oh I doubt if the power struggle between Todt, Bernie and the teams is far from over...

 

[Flibster]

Well I'm currently awaiting the payback from Bernie.
Anyone else fully expecting half the team passes to fail to work in China?

Bernie isn't going to take this lying down.

 

[Glaucus]

Bernie payback incoming. what will it be.
well at least we'll have some more great rants by him to laugh at, like the driver comments.

however he'll also pick two new absolutely insane ideas an make them vote one of them in.

 

[Skeeter]

Well I'm currently awaiting the payback from Bernie.
Anyone else fully expecting half the team passes to fail to work in China?

Bernie isn't going to take this lying down.

Bernie and the FIA can decide whatever they want for the 2017 season, so expect a crackpot stupid idea to emerge from the senile old idiots over the coming months.

 

[timmeh]

They're suggesting a qualifying race on the Saturday for 2017

 

[pastymuncher]

Common sense prevails at last. Not sure about this Saturday race nonsense though. Apart from the fact cost's will shoot up how will it mix the grid up for the main race? We will still have the Merc's first and second. What if there's a hard crash and they can't fix the car for the main race? Will they get a bigger engine and gearbox allocation for the year and drive costs even higher?

 

[Skeeter]

When combined with the 2017 car rules where there will be no overtaking, that qualifying race idea sounds utterly stupid

 

[Marvin]

TBH I'd quite like the idea of a qualifying race. People are always complaining about how F1 isn't a "sprint" race as it used to be (although obviously never has been), so if it's around 30 minutes with no mandatory pit stops you could get an interesting race. Set the grid with the reverse of championship position and base the main race grid upon the results of the sprint race.

Costs should actually be reduced from the current system as less tyres are used, and therefore free more sets up for the race itself. Pirelli have said the issue they have with the current system of qualifying is that it's wasteful (though I don't see how either of the new formats suggested would fix that).

 

[Skeeter]

Eh? How do you come to the conclusion is saves money? The saving of a couple of sets of tyres would be vastly outweighed by the damage to wings and bodywork, and the need to increase the allocation of engines and gearboxes to support it.

Putting everyone in reverse order is not going to generate a clean race. You just have to look at any reverse grid series to see that.

Plus, its still going to be difficult to overtake. Your not going to see someone come from last to 1st in 15 laps at Monaco.

Reverse grids are a stupid idea in any formula where there isn't either car parity or a wealth of overtaking. Plus they also need to be cheap formulas in terms of damage repair.

The 3 session qualifying works fine. People should park it and put their attention on the things that need fixing.

 

[Marvin]

Well, I don't disagree, but they will meddle.

 

[Skeeter]

I have zero confidence in any sort of sensible, well thought out proposal coming from the FIA. And it's all irrelivent next to the monumental catastrophy that is the 2017 Technical Regulations. Nobody will care about Saturday because Sunday will just be 2 hours of utterly nothing happening so nobody will bother watching.

 

[Marvin]

Yes. I was reading an article where the FIA have stated that the 2017 regs have taken overtaking into account:

We've had countless meetings with the technical directors of every team, and we have had a whole range of proposals from what appears to be a huge amount of downforce to a very low level of downforce, but it is all based on the premise that we will have a significant increase in mechanical grip. So what we have ended up, inevitably, is somewhere in the middle.

It is incorrect to say that the anticipated lap time improvement will all come from downforce, because it simply shouldn't be. The whole idea is that half of that will come from mechanical grip, and the other half will come from aerodynamic downforce.

One of the things that we have been talking all along is the fact that we must not make it more difficult to follow another car, and that has been one of the underlying principles. So, we've done I believe the best we can, given we have to take everyone's views in to account.

So that clears that up. There will be more downforce, but because there are wider tyres, overtaking will still be as it is now.

Forgetting of course that the above is ********. Just making the cars wider makes it harder to overtake, without even thinking about the downforce...

 

[Glaucus]

And I bet no extra engines and no real time to massively increase reliability for said qualifying race, which means less laps in FP.

 

[Skeeter]

Wider cars can be a good thing for overtaking. It increases the drag for a leading car and increases the slipstreaming effect for following ones.

But it's all insignificant in a set of regulations that increases the size and complexity of front and rear wings, increase the height and complexity of the rear diffuser, and reintroduces the mess of on body wings and flip ups.

 

[The_Abyss]

Never mind that - a seventh person has voted that they preferred the elimination qualifying despite the evidence of the last two races!