F1 Fanatic

IndyCar have explained how their new heat-based qualifying system will work for the race at the 1.4km (0.875 mile) Iowa race this year.

I’m not a fan of over-complicated formats and that exactly what we’ve got here. In short:

1. Every driver does a single qualifying lap. They have the track to themselves and their running order is chosen at random.
2. The top six advance directly to the final heat and start in positions one to six respectively.
3. The first 50-lap heat involves the drivers who finished 8th, 10th, 12th, etc… The top two finishers in this start eighth and tenth in the final heat. The rest take positions 12, 14, 16 etc… on the final grid.
4. The second 50-lap heat involves the drivers who finished 7th, 9th, 11th, etc… The top two finishers in this start seventh and ninth in the final heat. The rest take positions 11, 13, 15 etc… on the final grid.
5. The final 50-lap heat involves the ten drivers selected above and decides the top ten places on the grid.
6. The top 12 on the final grid are awarded points as follows: 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-1-1-1

(I think I’ve got that all right. Have a look here and tell me if you think otherwise!)

Obviously this is nothing like as bad as picking the starting positions out of a hat as they did at Texas two years ago. But does it really have to be this complicated?

Still if it gives fans better value for money from their tickets and puts more bums on seats then it’s a good thing.

Yeah, that’s complicated! Although it’s nice to see that if you’re fast, but blow it in flat-out qualifying, you can redeem your position somewhat during the appropriate heat. This should eliminate fast cars starting at the back.

I guess IndyCar officials missed Sebastian Vettel’s race at Yas Marina. ;-)

My brain was melting by the time I got to the end of 3.

Now that I’ve thought about it a bit more I do like it better than some of the terrible systems F1 used in the mid-2000s. Like ‘race-fuel qualifying’ and the dreadful aggregate timing they used for the first half of 2005 before realising what a horrible mistake they’d made.

V8 Supercars often try convoluted Quali systems, often so as to involve a second driver

See, that’s a time when aggregate qualifying actually would be a good idea. Both drivers will use the car in the race, so the grid should be made up by adding the regular driver’s time to the co-driver’s time.

A race in qualifying? Seems like the idea F1 had a few years ago, having everyone drive a race with the driver in the last position at the end of each lap being eliminated.

@plushpile @prisoner-monkeys

V8 Supercars often try convoluted Quali systems, often so as to involve a second driver.

See, that’s a time when aggregate qualifying actually would be a good idea. Both drivers will use the car in the race, so the grid should be made up by adding the regular driver’s time to the co-driver’s time.

Yeah I like the idea of aggregate qualifying a bit better for races where multiple drivers are sharing the same car. It adds the dimension of “team X would have qualified better if driver Y hadn’t done a poor lap”.

@roblo97 This oval is shorter than the Las Vegas oval and IndyCar has already raced on an oval of that length since the Wheldon crash.

And I don’t think the qualifying format had anything to do with what happened then:

Rethinking oval racing for IndyCar after Las Vegas