I'm pleased to see that the changes that have been adopted for Saturdays of Grand Prix weekends are not actually stupid. But (there always is a but, I'm afraid) they still don't make complete sense, and an opportunity to re-introduce parity throughout the field has been missed.
I'm very happy about the changes to the timings of the sessions. Q1 has become the least relevant session, although that may well be different this year if reliability issues means teams struggle occasionally to complete two runs (or even one). Back in my Marussia days, Q1 was the only session that mattered. Recently, Q2 has become the most exciting, and I'll confess I've not been worried too much about Q3; it's been far more important to make sure that you are in the top ten, rather than where you are in it.
But tyres - why make the top ten start on their Q2 tyres? The cars that don't make it to Q3 don't have to start on their Q2 tyres, so why should the top ten? Either remove the requirement for any cars to start on a particular set of tyres, or make everyone start on the tyres they used in either Q1 or Q2. It has to be unfair that the car in 11th can start on new tyres but the car in 10th has to use tyres that have gone through at least one heat cycle.
If you can explain it to me, please do.
Well, the way I see it the rules were already unfair. The car in 11th could start on fresh tires, but the one in 10th would have to start on used ones (assuming that a time had been set).
ReplyDeleteWith the present rules, there is no incentive to hold back in Q3, and to get to Q3, you would have to set a time in Q2, so on par the fairness levels remain the same, right?