Oliver WhiteOkay, so we have all filled in the
… But what do we – the fans who keep the sport alive – think of the new ‘tweaked’
In my day, when dinosuars roamed the earth, qualifying consisted of a one hour session. In this time, drivers had 12 laps, including outs and ins. When the clock hit zero, any driver on a lap could complete it and have it counted. Obviously, the fastest claimed pole and so on and so forth.
Typically, most drivers would go out and do an out/fast/in during the first half hour – this was a banker lap. Then the top drivers would wait until the final 10-15 minutes before venturing back out onto the circuit to set the really quick times in a fast and furious flurry. This was because the track tends to get faster as the session progresses, and the top drivers weren’t obliged to get TV air-time for sponsers, unlike the Minardi’s and Forti’s at the time.
However, there were no ‘fuel-burning’ laps. There were no ‘one-lap-wonders’. There were no complicated ‘who’s in and who’s out’ questions?. It was mano-a-mano. Man and machine against the tarmac.
So what do people think of the new ‘knock-out’ system with the slightly reduced final session? Does it work? Is it a waste of time, not worth watching? Or does it work? Is it exciting? Does it produce real class in driving as one would expect from F1?
Have your say…
Personally, I don’t like this format. It seems to me a little bit “immoral”, in these days, to have cars running just to “burn fuel” and get lighter, for example. Also, knock-out format is not particularly easy to follow, as there are always too much cars on track to understand what’s going on without timing monitors.
On the other side, one lap format was good, as you could follow all the drivers, but had the problem that conditions could change from time to time, leaving no chance to the driver to choose the right moment to go on the track.
I don’t know if there is really a solution to that, the old format brought us to seeing 30 minutes of empty track, so that’s not the real solution too…