F1 teams agree elimination style qualifying for 2016

Two pages on the topic here already;

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/f1/514422-f1-teams-agree-elimination-style-qualifying-2016-a.html

 

Sounds like a complicated gimmick in a sport that is already too complicated to follow without considerable effort.

F1 is already far too difficult for new fans to understand and something of a struggle even for average fans like me. I'm reasonably bright and would struggle to explain on demand how the cars are powered and what the significance of a failure in the system is with so many turbo hybrid parts packages: ICE, TC, MGU-K, MGU-H, ES and CE. When in a quick interview and a driver is explaining his retirement in shorthand, does anyone who isn't an engineer really appreciate in real time what the problem was? Problem with "harvesting" means what? MGU-K won't generate energy, MGU-H isn't recycling energy, ES won't store it? If there's an issue with "deployment", what does that mean? The ES isn't releasing the energy? The electric motors aren't working? The EC won't talk to everything to communicate the instruction? Power unit problem means... ICE developing an issue, TC failed? Or are we back to the MGU-K, MGU-H, ES, and CE again?

The last thing we need is to make the rules even more complicated. I'm seriously getting fed up of F1's various commissions, committees, working groups, councils, and regulators - everybody's thinking and tweaking the show, but nobody's thinking intelligently and nobody's fixing intrinsic problems with the sport.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

F1 and NASCAR are looking more alike.

 

So the more I read the rules, the more confused I get… However, my interpretation is as follows:-

In any given quail session (1, 2 or 3) the drivers will have to try and set their fastest possible time in the first few minutes. After that, the elimination clock starts ticking with one dropping out every 1min 30seconds. BUT when the elimination clock starts ticking the existing lap times don't re-set, so those who have set fast laps can just sit back and watch. Net result - less lapping at the end. Not much change for the fastest cars. A loss of TV time for the slowest cars which get knocked out earlier (e.g. Manor).

Net result - a stupid idea which will rob fans of car on-track time (if my interpretation is correct). Seriously, this sport is being run by a bunch of inverse genii.

ps - sorry for starting a separate thread earlier - I didn't see this one!.

 

*sigh*

 

This idea comes straight out of video games. Someone's child on the F1 Commission must be creating the rules now because none of them can be bothered.

I'm not really a fan of the current qualifying but this is taking it 20 steps backwards.

The only good thing is that we will have a few races where people can talk about it (Sky etc) and convince the rule makers not to vote this crap in.

 

More BS gimmicks, more complexity for observers. And with new American fans (presumably) tuning in to watch OUR new F1 team, for them this may be indecipherable. Nice job, F1; this is your boldest innovation since demanding helmets stay the same all year. These people are so brainless it's amazing they can breathe while they're asleep.

 

I don't know if this is going to work, but I think it's worth trying to spice up qualifs.

I hate watching cars standing in their garage, or after a good run, or before the last minute left.

The paying spectators comes to see cars running on the track, not in the pits.

Teams that keep cars too long in the pits should be penalised.

I hope this system addresses some of that.

No more Mister Smartass waiting for the last 30secs. get on the track and do some laps!!!

Anything will be better than status quo, IMO.

 

Genius, ain't it?

 

LH speaks on qualy changes - Lewis Hamilton says Formula 1 rule changes will have little effect - BBC Sport


World champion Lewis Hamilton says planned changes to qualifying for this season will not have much effect.

A new elimination-based system will be introduced for the 2016 season, which starts next month, if teams given it the go-ahead in the next few days.

Brit Hamilton, who drives for Mercedes, hopes the changes will help spice up the sport but said: "I don't really feel like it is going to change much."

Williams driver Felipe Massa added that the plan could cause "chaos".

The idea is to retain the current system of three parts of qualifying, but eliminate one driver at a time through each of the sessions.

This would result in a 90-second shoot-out for pole position between two drivers.

"I don't know if it I like it or not," added Massa. "I need to have a little bit of time to sit down and understand the rules, understand the change.

"The only thing I understand is that they want to create some chaos - and this will happen for sure."

Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo agreed with Hamilton.

"I don't know how much it's going to change," he said.

"It might put a little bit more pressure on us to execute the lap early in the session because after five minutes or something they're going to start ticking them off."


Concern about rule changes

F1's governing body the FIA has also agreed the fundamentals of changes to make the cars faster and more dramatic-looking in 2017.

These will result in wider cars, with wider bodywork and wider tyres, and more downforce created from the underfloor.

The teams had been trying to lower the weight of the cars, to help with the plan to make them faster, but they have ended up being 20kg heavier.

Hamilton described the situation as "ridiculous".

He said he had been wondering why his car had been sliding around on the track and only realised late on that it was because the cars weigh more.

"That makes a big, big difference," said the three-time world champion.

"They don't have to change the regulations much to make it go faster, just make the cars lighter. They are just super heavy."

Hamilton did not comment directly on the specific design changes planned but said: "I don't agree with the changes that are made and have been made for many years, so you just live with it."

He also said he felt the drivers should have more input into rule changes.

 

Unless they reset everyone's time when the eliminate a car, it will change NOTHING. The car's will simply wait to go out until they would be eliminated. It would cut the session in half. You can't really improve your times the more laps you run on a set of tires.

 

The way I see it, all the teams will have to send the cars on the track from the outset, instead of keeping them in the garages, like the top teams liked to do.

The cars will have to stay on the track longer, which may determine the tyre strategy, and possibly the choice of harder compound.

The spectators will possibly see more actions during the qualifications. Monitoring the radio communications should be interesting!

 

I don't think the change should handicap Mercedes; if they have the best cars, that should reflect on the result anyhow.

To me, the idea is to make sure the cars come out on the track earlier, and stay on the track.

The spectators are robbed by cars stationary in the pits.

 

+1 and this was driven by the race promoters from what I have read....

 

I feel like the mid-pack folks will be more apt to stay out through the entire session though. They have to get out early to set a good time and will want to stay out through the "knock-out" portions so they don't get bumped down the line. Maybe I'm wrong and they'll just do one lap then go in and hope like they do now.

I will agree that its not likely to make the front-pack guys do anything other than get on track early in the session instead of late, turn one lap, and park.

 

Staying out wears down tires and the car. One hard lap spoils the tires.
Unless you remove the restrictions of having a car start the race as it qualified; putting in one single good qualifying lap per session will still remain the optimal strategy for the best race day.
Each attempt to create a hair faster time in one session, to avoid not get knocked out, means you must pit one or two laps sooner on race day.

So long as the need to conserve the car and tires remain, one single flying lap per session will remain.

A better solution - each session the teams can use a fresh set of tires. This means the wear on the PU and car would be the determining factor on the detriments of staying out for more laps. Q3 got a lot more action once teams were allotted a special tire for Q3.

 

I think you'll now see the fast cars go out more than once in q1. The track significantly improves through a session so teams that set an early lap will be in danger of getting bumped as the track improves, particularly if it rains overnight. I think the fast teams will at least no longer have the luxury of using only mediums in q1 if they want just one early run. They'll have to choose to either run softs early and only run once or do two medium runs as the track improves, which at least throws a wrinkle in there that wasn't there before.

As to being difficult to follow, I don't think f1 fans are that dumb, honestly. It's not very difficult at all. The dumb fans watch for the crashes and don't care about the rules anyway, and more on track action is more potential for crashes so they should be happy too.

 

+1

I hope Ferrari won't repeat the mistakes they made several times by holding Raikkonen back in Q1 !!!

 

Once the 90 second eliminations start, what is to be done about completing a lap already started. If a driver who has the slowest time at one of the 90 second marks, completes the fastest lap of the session 2 seconds later, is he eliminated?

If laps begun before the 90 second mark count, then the elimination may not actually occur until more than a minute later which means that it may not be until just a few seconds before the next elimination time that it is known who is actually finished.

This just seems a bit contrived. Like someone said earlier, this is beginning to look like a video game. All that's missing is the ability to make the eliminated car disappear into a cloud of twinkling dust at the magic instant of elimination. Perhaps they could even play the first few bars of the driver's national anthem as he goes up in a rainbow burst of fairy dust.

 

I think we'll start seeing cars coming together in qualifying

 

More support from the Paddock. Possibly this is in a way, what we were asking for???

New qualifying format will 'cause upsets'