[Bill B.]

I watched it and I still don’t believe what I saw. Can anyone explain why Bernie and His Band of Fools or whomever made the decision to change the most exciting and dramatic qualifying format of any in world motorsport actually thought this FARCE would be anything but astonishingly horrible? New Coke was a master stroke compared to this collective brain cramp.

Too bad this isn’t the Middle Ages, at least then we would have the heads of all the officialdom up on stakes at the front gate by dinner time.

And what about the teams? Are you telling me Ron Dennis looked at this and said, “sounds good to me, bro.” Ferrari…Red Bull….Williams …..hello, anybody home?

[David Not Coulthard]

You seem to forget about how democratic the most powerfu states of the middle ages were.

[glynh]

I think I’m in the minority but I didn’t think it was that bad, just a bit of an anti climax. We’ve had plenty of sessions in the past few years where there’s been no cars on track.

I don’t think it’s better than the old way – it has pros but there isn’t enough time for the slower teams. Based on today’s race I’m with button and would say it’s just pointless.

[GeeMac]

The system would have actually been worth looking into had the drivers been able to do more than one quick lap on a set of tyres. Since they can’t it was completely nonsensical, the teams can only turn cars around so quickly.

[Edgar Wilson]

I agree with “Glynh” things were not that bad. There was nothing wrong with Q1 and Q2, however a tweak in the 90 second rule would have made it better. For instance if a driver is on a lap, a refinement allowing him to complete it would increase the excitement as he approached the end of the lap instead of the anti-climatic fizzle of just dropping Him mid lap.

The format for Q3 must be tweaked even further – 10 should start but instead of dropping drivers until only 2 are left – only five are eliminated using the 90 second rule leaving 5 to duke out the last 3 or 4 minutes.

The thing I liked about the elimination system is that it got everyone out on the track and there is excitement in the air. The old system was sometimes exciting but had boring moments when no one was on track.

I for one am happy that they now wish to further refine the elimination system instead of reverting to the old sometimes exciting format.
for although the last Q3 was the most puky and anti climatic one that I have seen refinements could make the elimination system exciting from Q1 to Q3 and not just the last 2 or 3 minutes but from the time they start the qualies

[David Not Coulthard]

So for Bahrain we’ll get the hard tyres as the mandatory qualy tyres, hmmmmm

[Anonymous]

They could make the following tweaks:

For both Q1 and Q2
a) Increase the session length by 1 minute (Q1 from 16 minutes up to 17 minutes, Q2 from 15 minutes up to 16 minutes)
b) Reduce the total number of cars to be eliminated from 7 cars down to 6 cars
c) Increase the time between each car being eliminated from 1 minute 30 seconds up to 2 minutes

For Q3
a) Decrease the session length by 2 minutes (from 14 minutes down to 12 minutes)
b) Remove the elimination aspect and allow all cars that made it through Q2 to take part throughout the whole session

This would basically keep Q1 and Q2 as elimination sessions with minor tweaks and Q3 would revert back to exactly the same as it was in 2015.

[Author]

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