The Official 2016 Formula One Season

supossedly qualy should reward the fastest driver and thats simply not happening. obviously this is made on purpose to mix-up the grid a bit but where is the sense of competence?





Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2016 08:01AM by Frantic.

hahaha :D
:D
:D
These last 2:30 minutes in Q3, lasts 2 minutes in Q2. Most tense qualifying I can remember!

cant believe I stayed up until 4 AM to see this. guess I´m stupider than this system

TBH Frantic I thought it would have been better than that too. I thought the premise was that more drivers would be on the track for longer, but as it was they all went on together, the fast ones then parked it and the slower ones didn't have enough time to refuel and bolt on a new set of tyres.

As I think Damon Hill said* on Sky, Hamilton could have waved the chequered flag for himself. What a farce.

The problem is that Bernie, despite saying this was "horrible" has already said he doesn't want to go back to the previous, so what @#$%&-up solution is he going to cook up now?

In the UK Channel 4 are probably already regretting their decision!

* Probably the first interesting thing either Hill or Herbert have said since they started on Sky.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2016 02:14PM by gav.

As for qualifying itself my eyes rolled back in my head when the Mercs went 6 tenths quicker than the Ferrari's the first time around (Q2 or start of Q3? Can't remember...). We knew it was coming, but my heart fell to the floor knowing fine well what's going to happen for the rest of the season.

gav Wrote:
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> The problem is that Bernie, despite saying this
> was "horrible" has already said he doesn't want to
> go back to the previous, so what @#$%&-up solution
> is he going to cook up now?

He already spilled the beans on that, and it is worse. Much worse.

Basically he wants the old system back from way back. One solid season as we knew it from 15 years ago. But to add some spice the top finishers from the last race would get time penalties. So if Hamilton won the last race, he would get say a 0.8 time penalty on the next qual. The runner up would get 0.7 and so on... So you would get last races winner taking pole, but starting in 6th or 7th.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

Frantic Wrote:
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> cant believe I stayed up until 4 AM to see this.
> guess I´m stupider than this system

I haven't actually done the 'stay up lark' for some while mostly due to the need to remain fresh for work etc.

But I got up for it instead (having elected to miss free practice for similar reasons to above) and basically wished I hadn't.

They've ruined qualifying entirely. The excitement has been sucked right out of it. Part of the excitement of qualifying was always the way it built up towards the end as the track conditions get gripper. This 'musical chairs' elimination shanigans simply results in half of the field being unable to respond to a competitors lap time.

Not only that... It's not even mixed up the grid all that much if at all, maybe just one or two cars out of position. So it hasn't even achieved it's objective.

Can you elaborate a bit more on that qualy thing ? I'm not following F1 anymore (Uncle Bernie killed me a couple of years ago) but still interested in what is happening in it, even if it's for the worst of all.

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Qualifying has a deselection after every 90 seconds. The slowest car is eliminated. There is a grace period of a couple of minutes. In theory, it is brilliant. In reality, not so much.

First of all, the teams didn't understand the rules. If your car is under threat, it has to complete a new lap before the countdown runs out. This requires an exit lap of x seconds (melbourne 90 secs), and then a flying lap (85 seconds), for a total of no less than 175 seconds (approx 3 minutes - melbourne). Pretty much half of the teams got this wrong sending out cars that would never have a chance of improving their laps, since the countdown ran out before they completed their laps - exception the last car is allowed to complete the lap after the countdown has ended!

Secondly, of the teams that got it right, they correctly understood that they would not get a better lap on the same tyres, hence they would need to pit and exchange. Regular pit stops are banned, so cars have to physically enter the garage to change tyres. Hence most teams figured that since they planned the lap for optimal track conditions, there was no time to refit tyres and improve. So they only made one run.

So what you got was teams setting times the first 4-5 minutes, and then retiring from quals. Leaving the last 4-5 minutes empty, except for 2-3 cars trying to avoid elimination in q1 and q2. Since this is not a concern in q3, the last 5 minutes where devoid of track action.

It's abolished now, and good riddance!!!!

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2016 01:28PM by Morbid.

Thanks Morbid for the explaination

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And thankfully they're going back to the 2015 format for Bahrain - the format was never broken so hard to understand what they were trying to 'fix'...

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I think they realise it was never broken, but they wanted to try to mix the grid up a bit by having people out of position, but for the front runner it would very rarely make any difference (they can just drive at 95% until the end and not make any mistakes). It's obviously great they've gone back, but I can understand what they were trying to do - it was just never going to have any effect in most circumstances.

gav Wrote:
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> I think they realise it was never broken, but they
> wanted to try to mix the grid up a bit by having
> people out of position, but for the front runner
> it would very rarely make any difference (they can
> just drive at 95% until the end and not make any
> mistakes). It's obviously great they've gone
> back, but I can understand what they were trying
> to do - it was just never going to have any effect
> in most circumstances.

That's the thing though, artificially trying to mix up the grid goes against everything F1 stands for, and I doubt the teams would be happy with it either. The most poles trophy would be a waste of time too, given the fastest driver would be starting several places back.

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Am i the one thinking the format from 2002 where you had 12 laps and an hour was really good.

1. You have dedicated time for each driver's lap
2. You can watch drivers pushing 4 times a qualy
3. You can have different strategies (e. G go out and do 3 laps or 4 lAps)
4. If the weather is changing you have mixed grids

Quote
Diax F1
That's the thing though, artificially trying to mix up the grid goes against everything F1 stands for, and I doubt the teams would be happy with it either.

I'm certainly not in favour of it (I've compared F1 to BTCC more often than I'd like already this year, and the gimmicks should be left to BTCC), just pointing out what they were trying to achieve.

I slated it at the time but I think single lap quali would be a good direction to move in. Spread over three sessions with the slowest knocked out. I think that would work.

That would be much longer than an hour. you´d have like 50 laps in total to broadcast, and thats more than a race in some circuits like Spa. Dont see it as a viable option, mostly for commercial issues.

My favourite is also the pre 2002 system for the same reasons mitadumapaga stated. the Q1 Q2 Q3 is ok but it takes away some variables like doing a Barrichello in Spa ´94.

All the versions will have issues. Until 1996 if it was dry on Friday and then wet on saturday then it was pointless to run at all that day. 1996-2002 had the thing of bigger teams waiting for the backmarkers to grip up the track. The one lap shootout was unfair if you had a mistake in the prequaly. You have to use the one that makes more pure racing and that means being the fastest.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2016 05:38AM by Frantic.

Back in the good old days qualifying didn't even exist. They just took the fastest practice times across both days and that decided the grid. It obviously wouldn't work for the TV now, but it was just three days of F1. Bish bash bosh.

i also liked the old 1-hour 12 lap system. as has been said, you'd get 4 runs of 3 laps and it generally build to a crescendo (apart from if it rained and got worse through the hour). maybe 1 hour is too long today, so 45mins maybe, with 12 laps per driver might be good?

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

I liked the one-shot quali format over Friday and Saturday that we had in 2003, that really worked well. You got to see each driver's true single-lap pace uninterrupted by traffic, you got to study each lap in detail, and it really shuffled the order up whenever there was changeable weather during the quali hour. (The best example was Friday quali at Magny-Cours when the track was drying out and it produced an all-Minardi front row, too bad that wasn't the final race grid.)

The pre-2003 format wasn't bad either - in Montoya's Legends of F1 feature show for Sky he was saying how he loved having the 12 laps and 4 hot laps during the hour, and pushing harder each time... That's endorsement enough for me!

Whatever format they choose next, they should try not to make it look too manufactured - just choose something more straightforward and let it flow. Otherwise it looks desperate and pathetic.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/23/2016 04:01AM by EC83.