F1 “definitely needs” new race format – Hamilton

2017 F1 season

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Lewis Hamilton has backed Ross Brawn’s suggestion of running a non-championship event to experiment with a new race format.

Brawn proposed the idea as a means of innovating without affecting the championship. F1 has previously considered holding more than one race per weekend.

Hamilton said Brawn’s suggestion “doesn’t sound like a terrible idea” when it was put to him yesterday.

Testing day four in pictures
“I think a new format is definitely needed,” said the Mercedes driver. “Thursday to Sunday has been the same for the last 11 years. At least the ten years I’ve been here’s been the same.”

“I think with the way these cars are, the direction and design they go which makes it difficult for us to overtake and then people complain that we don’t overtake.”

“We’ve got to come up with some unique and different races. Maybe every other race is going to be a different scenario.”

Hamilton singled out the Monaco Grand Prix as one round which particularly needs its own treatment.

“When you go to Monaco you can’t just do the same race format because no one can overtake there,” he said. “So maybe we need to spice it up, do something different, maybe have a sprint race, I don’t know.”

“The Monaco race should be different to the others. There’s lots of ideas but I’m not going to share them.”

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Keith Collantine
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85 comments on “F1 “definitely needs” new race format – Hamilton”

  1. Erm, no.

    1. knoxploration
      2nd March 2017, 21:11

      Exactly. The race format is *perfect* as-is, with the possible exception of there being too much practice / testing allowed prior to the race. The only change I’d make is to reduce the amount of pre-race practice and replace it with post-race testing sessions instead, so fans at the track can see the same amount of action if they want to, but teams have less info to perfect their race setups.

      But really, the problems we face have little to nothing to do with the race format, and everything to do with poor management, terrible rule-making and far too much interference in what the teams are allowed to do. Unless and until we stop kneecapping the top teams by making them reuse engines and gearboxes endlessly to help the delicate little snowflake backmarkers that can’t afford them (while simultaneously giving the top teams the lion’s share of the cash even if they don’t perform well), then F1 will continue to be a pale shadow of its former self.

      Here’s how to fix F1 in a nutshell:

      * Get rid of Todt
      * Get rid of Whiting
      * Get rid of any unequal payments to teams: All teams should receive the same base payment which is sufficient to finance their entire operation. All prize money should go not to the team, but to the team’s employees, distributed equally between them. No team should receive a cent more than its rivals simply for showing up.
      * Get rid of all lifecycle management. It should be entirely up to the teams to decide how long to reuse their engines, transmissions and all other components of their cars.
      * Greatly increase mechanical grip and greatly reduce aerodynamic grip.
      * Rewrite the rules to remove ambiguity wherever possible, and to allow the teams the maximum freedom to innovate wherever possible.

      Hey presto, we’re done.

      1. “Hey presto, we’re done.”

        Because it’s that easy. Ayayayay…

        1. knoxploration
          3rd March 2017, 12:41

          For 95% of it, yes, it is that easy. The only roadblocks are the exceptionally overinflated and fragile egos of the people and teams involved.

  2. Cue all the drivers in the hunt for the title not participating incase of injury and manufactures not running to save parts engines etc.

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      2nd March 2017, 11:12

      Exactly my thoughts. Why would teams be interested in paying to compete in a race that is outside of the Championship? Will they be allowed an extra engine and gearbox free of charge?

      1. Brawn said they could have money incentive rewards that go towards the end of the championship instead of points, so yes I think teams would be interested in competing in non championship races if it significantly bumped up their cash handout at the end of the year.

      2. I think that the current race format is fine… however if a non-championship race was done right, it could work very well:

        For my money it should be at the end of the season (a fortnight after the last race) and should essentially be an F1 end of season festival that includes publicly presenting the championship trophies in front of a crowd of fans and not a fancy dinner.

        A reverse grid race where cars start in reverse final championship order. No pit stops, all tyre compounds available but race distance somewhere between the expected tyre length of the two obvious compounds, but importantly not requiring a full tank of fuel. Significant prize money to convince all teas to take part, but a genuine chance for the smaller teams to win that prize. Cars without the regular season driver ineligible for prize money.

        Pit stop challenge. Done on a mock pit setup in whichever part of the track has the most / biggest grand stands, so in full view. Maybe limit pit crew (more old school – one guy per wheel perhaps?), but prizes available to pit crews (to the folk who the extra cash would make a difference. Maybe both drivers have to be part of the crew? Something that screams teamwork!

        MAC3. As per WTCC. 3 cars per engine manufacturer (encourages multi team support – Honda currently ineligible). Maybe driver finishing highest in WDC also ineligible too. Significant prizes for the manufactures.

        There could be more experimental formats, and this would be the place to try them and probably decide to keep the gimmicks to a once a year “super bowl” festival event that could theoretically pay for itself and really engage with the fans.

        1. @euro-brun some good ideas there…and if something doesn’t work… so what! At least try!

          It’d be cool to see formula1 put a proverbial suggestion box on their website… I’d like to see the top f1 teams field alternate drivers. With their a-team possibly doing commentary or pitting the juniors.

          Have fun with it! Which is what we should be doing.

    2. Mercedes and Red Bull have in the past still raced for wins even with the championship in the bag.

      It’s easy for us who watch from home to forget the importance of a Grand Prix as a singular event. For a lot of people F1 starts and stops with their local race. Championship points or not.

      1. petebaldwin (@)
        2nd March 2017, 13:38

        Yeah but if they didn’t race, I imagine they would be breaking their contract with F1 and Bernie would have immediately made things difficult for them. I doubt their agreements include taking part in non-Championship races.

        1. @petebaldwin

          Ok I don’t just mean they showed up and put the cars on track to meet a contractual obligation, they fought and won those races as though the championship depended on it.

  3. Id support a full length grand prix as we have now, with a qualifying race in identical formula fords to set the grid.

    1. Or each race would use a different affordable car for qualifying.

    2. Yes, except instead of Formula Fords I’d vote for 1976 spec Formula Atlantics, e.g., Ralt RT-1 with a Cosworth BDA and a Hewland gearbox.
      That would be simply phenomenal to have these guys race 20 Ralt RT-1s, and it would answer an awful lot of arguments.

    3. How about F1 car and local provided spec car as the two cars. United States might provide 900 hp Sprint cars, while Brazil might provide KF1 karts, Aus: V8s, UK: Ariels, etc. Or whatever each locale decides.

      Fri: Qual both car classes.
      Sat: Spec Car Race, drivers get points
      Sun: F1 Race, teams gets points

      1. Or just Rotax Maxs or other spec kart class, and drivers bring along their own karts. That might be even better, because the drivers race you see more of the driver.

  4. I think realistically, you’ll be looking at a spring race scenario.

    I can’t see Ross Brawn campaigning for reverse grids and all sorts of nonsense.

    1. Sprint**

  5. I don’t overly want a new race format but if we are going to get one I love the idea of having a non-championship test race for it. In the interests of making it not about testing and to alleviate cost concerns it would be good to do it in the off season using last seasons cars. Also it could be used to bring new drivers in, as having Hamilton, Alonso…etc is not exactly necessary to see whether a new format works. Maybe even do it at a non-F1 circuit – gauge interest for a potential F1 championship race there in the future. I quite like the idea of a kind of spectacle race in the off season even if it’s not about bringing in a new format. Kind of like in football or other sports where they have friendly games – often in foreign countries that would otherwise be unable to see those teams. Done right it could serve a multitude of purposes.

  6. They could try the format V8SC used: a given mileage for weekend distributed throught the saturday/sunday. Sometimes one would see two sprint (1/4, 1/4 mileage) races on saturday and a longer on sunday (1/2), or half on saturday, half on sunday.
    And why not a 3-4h Belgium or Canada GP?
    They even might grant different points for positions, but makes no sense to run 2h in Barcelona to see mostly nothing.
    The excuse that a championship could be decide on saturday does not hold. People watch basketball finals on a tuesday.
    p.s.: want another suggestion from australia? put ramps on the tracks

  7. Just ban front and rear wings, that would make overtaking a lot easier without having to cheapen the championship.

    1. I’d go for standard wings, designed for overtaking. Keeps the sponsorship space, no one can telling wing from another.

    2. I’ve seen this “ban the wings” as a supposed solution by the punters more and more as the drivers call for less aero dependence, and I think it’s why the drivers should shut up, they know that Brawn will be looking at it with a long view over the coming years and putting pressure on the teams aswell.

      Having the fans think the sport is broken the way it is, does nothing good for it or them. Removing the wings is a stupid idea as I’m sure the drivers fully understand, the cars need to go fast, and need to be controllable in doing so. Carefully and independently investigating how to reduce the dirty aero wake and managing the regulations with that goal in mind doesn’t mean “ban the wings” and overtaking will magically be easy, they probably wouldn’t even have enough finesse over the cars’ control to overtake if they did.

      There’s no easy and simple solutions to any of this and it’s really annoying that Hamilton almost entirely is making it sound like there is and that those in charge are incompetent when they only just got the job.

      1. Utter garbage Tristan.

        Ross Brawn and the best drivers are saying less aero is the way. We should listen, not tell them to shut up.

        You say “Carefully and independently investigating how to reduce the dirty aero wake”, I say good luck with that one. It’s near impossible and if it was, how much the cost?

        It would be perfectly possible to massively reduce down-force we have now, keep the cars looking broadly the same and still have enough down force to keep the cars controllable but not too controllable. Lap time might suffer a little but the larger tyres and a higher fuel and boost allowance would go a long way to countering this. Overtaking would be improved. Nearly all unbiased knowledgeable people within the sport agreed on this.

        It’s not stupid. It is easy and it is simple.

    3. You cant ban wings, because you’ll lose lap time, and one of F1’s main selling points is that its the quickest road racing series in the world.

      1. petebaldwin (@)
        2nd March 2017, 13:41

        That’s the problem – If you remove the wings from F1, you will also have to make all the other series slower. You wouldn’t be able to make Indycar any slower so they’d immediately be faster than F1.

    4. Whilst the wings themselves do generate downforce, it is the complicated air flow structures that they create (particularly the front wing) that are causing the problems when following. Removing the wings would be a step too far in my opinion, but simplifying them would be the next logical step.

      Increasing the mechanical to aero grip ratio would be the other biggest boost to racing. Wider tyres are a step forward but I don’t think they’re overly much more grippy compared to the previous Pirellis from what I’ve heard.

    5. Unfortunately it isn’t as simple as not having wings. Wings were introduced because there is lift generated by the wheels as they move through the air. As a wheel moves through air it generates a low pressure area over the top of the wheel and a high pressure area at the base of the wheel. Someone told me the name of this effect but I’ve lost it at the moment, but it is easy to find articles that discuss the problem on the internet. Here is a one that shows the lifts, downforces, and drags on an open wheel series racing car that looks similar to the current spec F1 car (but the paper was written in 2009): http://www.designspace.com/staticassets/ANSYS/staticassets/awc/cfd-investigations-of-an-open-wheel-race-car.pdf
      I’m sorry, but I don’t have the expertise to interpret what some of the pictures are saying.
      Another reference: http://web.aeromech.usyd.edu.au//15afmc/proceedings/papers/AFMC00191.pdf

  8. Timetrial on the old Ring…..

    1. This is a great idea

  9. Cannot remember who said it, but one proposal was to add 1/100th second to your qualifying lap times for every championship point you have. By the end of last season the Mercs would have been giving away over 3.5 seconds in Qualy; reckon it would have been very interesting watching HAM and ROS having to fight each other at the same time they fought their way through nearly the entire field, including the red and the blue cars that would have been starting just in front of them.
    The advantage is that it is applied fairly across the grid (as opposed to DRS which favours one car over another), still encourages everyone to try as hard as possible in qualifying (as opposed to the reverse grid/sprint race ideas), would lead to some very interesting grid orders (they might still be lining up for the Ark, just the other way around), would also lead to the good cars being set up far more for overtaking (and they’d know this going into Qualy), and would also favour those drivers that are capable of pulling off overtakes (rather than just disappearing into the distance).
    The disadvantages? Well, it’s a form of handicapping and that’s not in the sport’s “DNA”. And maybe it’s just a really dumb idea (therefore it will probably get implemented next week without proper consideration).

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      2nd March 2017, 13:46

      I could live with that. I hate the idea of physically slowing a car down as a punishment for success however adding 0.01s to your quali time per point would mix up the grid without affecting performance.

      I’d have to see it in practice but it doesn’t feel as artificial as a lot of suggestions.

  10. The current race weekend format isn’t broke, so it doesn’t necessarily need fixing, but I could live with Brawn’s ‘once a year non-championship race’ idea, but only as long as it would stay like that.

  11. There’s a huge difference between a one-off non-championship event to investigate different formats and every other race being a different format. I don’t know why the call to try new things needs to be taken to the extreme.

  12. The current race weekend format isn’t broke, so it doesn’t necessarily need fixing, but I could live with Brawn’s ‘one non-championship event per year’ suggestion as long as the number of one-off events wouldn’t increase from that.

  13. “When you go to Monaco you can’t just do the same race format because no one can overtake there,” he said.

    Eehm,
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjjISGw2wsc
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nbJPOFOcWo 00:46 sec
    Make sure not to crash btw :)

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      2nd March 2017, 14:22

      Ok so the problem is that it’s difficult to overtake a Monaco. I understand that….

      Why is shortening the race being proposed as a solution to this? It doesn’t matter what format the weekend is run in – it’ll still be just as difficult to overtake!

    2. Hamilton’s idea is to put a sprint race in place of quali’s to set the field at Monaco because of lack of overtaking on the track, is absolutely lamebrain.
      There would just be MORE lack of overtaking in 2 different races, sandbagging if they set positions with inversions, and either all kinds of chaos, or nothing but a speedy parade.
      A better method at that particular track would be to use NASCAR style qualifying sessions where 1 car is on the track for 2 laps where no car can balk another or have their lap messed up by someone else.
      Spice it up by making the championship leaders go first if you want to have the lesser drivers with more of a chance as the track rubbers in.

  14. The race format should not be tampered with, there is nothing wrong with it, anything that changes it will just devalue it.
    The race weekend however, that definitely need looking at!
    My suggestion would be: Just swap qualifying with Practice. If you have qualifying on the friday, it will be on a green track, with nobody truly knowing what the correct set up would be, this would most likely change up the grid a bit for the race.
    Then practice on the Saturday would be for teams (especially the ones not at the front of the grid…that maybe should be) to find the right set up for their position on the grid (set the car up aggressively for overtaking, or vice versa)
    This should stop the races from becoming processions.
    This way there wouldn’t be less track time for the fans (as some have mentioned reducing practice) and will also encourage more fans to go to the circuit on the Friday, which in turn will benefit the circuit promoters

    1. Who’s gonna watch Qualifying at 1pm on a Friday? School, work and College.

    2. petebaldwin (@)
      2nd March 2017, 14:24

      Mercedes will qualify easily 1st and 2nd and will then sit out Saturday to save their engines….

  15. What’s with this notion that you have to Change things just because they have been in Place for a while? This Is precisely Why we can’t have nice things.

    How about a rule prohibiting lewis to Take Off his Helmet? Might be more likeable as a stig Kind of character?

  16. One of F1’s problems is a falling TV audience, partly because the races are disappearing behind paywalls. So unless one is a dedicated fan, you don’t pay to view, so potential new fans never see the races; you know how it goes.
    So supposing a non-championship race was given out as ‘free-to-air’, to give non-fans the opportunity to view a race on broadcast TV and possibly get them interested enough to commit to a paywall purchase? A taster if you like, of what the year has in store, like a pre-season game.
    A good promotional idea I would have thought, designed to educate and expand the market. Also, as it would be a non-championship race, it wouldn’t contravene any contracts with the paywall companies to have exclusive rights to championship races.

    1. Or just stop paying and paywalls will vanish. New and old fans could enjoy all races and the sport would grow.

      1. I’d rather have a paywall rather than an ad break every 10 minutes. But the subscription needs to come down. Personally I’d be happy to pay $20-$50 for a good race weekend (depending on race – low end for Singapore, high end for Spa) maybe more if there was full coverage of all sessions and good extra features.

      2. So with no paywall, where would the money come from?

      3. Where I live hardly anyone pays attention to F1 and that is solely because the benefit of F1 races on Free to Air TV was considered irrelevant.

  17. Initially I was dismissive of Brawn’s suggestion, but the more I think about it, the more opportunities I think it could open up for the sport. Sure, it’s not attacking the root cause of F1’s current frustrations (i.e. overtaking, conservative driving, financial distribution), but it could at least be a healthy way of keeping the sport fresh and engaging whilst attracting increased positive interest. It could be turned into an almost Goodwood-esque celebration of F1 with a strong festival atmosphere for fans and a chance for teams to work towards a common goal without the claw-fighting that happens on a regular race weekend. Whilst there’s no points incentive, there could at least be some other kind of reward (from something as crude as a trophy for the winners to some kind of proportionate financial bonus for participating teams).

    However, there are several issues that make the above paragraph a little too “in a perfect world”…

    The issue with having a single non-championship race is that it will end up being a very, VERY long-term project. Just because a particular format will work at a particular track, doesn’t mean it’s going to work at the other 20 tracks on the calendar. And what if adverse weather conditions were to strike on the day of the event? It’d be about as much use to FOM as this morning’s wet weather testing has been for the teams.

    With the current calendar becoming increasingly jam-packed (with Liberty’s suggestion that it could be increased to 25 races), it’s only going to add more strain on the resources of the less wealthy outfits. The summer break would seem like the most likely time to place the event, perhaps killing two birds with one stone by coinciding with the Young Driver’s test weekend?

    At the end of the day, teams will want to make sure they’re not losing out financially by participating. Also, with the somewhat-justifiable nature of team’s selfishness, teams will only favour a format if it gives them a competitive advantage over their rivals, whether it’s good for the sport or not.

    A nice idea with good intentions. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on for the long term once the sport’s more pressing issues have been tackled and resolved.

  18. What’s wrong with the current format. Qualifying is fine and doesn’t need tampering with and if theres people out there that can’t sit and watch 1 hour 45 mins ish of high speed action then they can do one. This obsession with changing to ‘modern times’ means in 10 years we’ll have a 22 minute race with an ad break when Hamilton stops and we’ll see what happened after the break

  19. He repeatedly mentions the inability to overtake so why would a different race format or non-championship race fix that? If the problem is the lack of overtaking or real fights for position, then fix that.

    1. Exactly. Get F1 to a point of a good mechanical to aero grip ratio, and there shouldn’t be a need for different formats. Put a good product on the track.

      Had to laugh at LH’s not wanting to share his ideas. ‘When I leave F1 and do a tell-all book about how my team conspired against me, I’ll also reveal my ideas for a different race format’.

  20. I think they should leave the weekend format, Especially the race format as it is. Practice on Friday, Qualify on Saturday & a single full Grand Prix on Sunday.

    As I said not long ago when we were discussing Friday practice & if it should be ditched, I like Friday practice because it’s really the only time during the weekend where you can just watch the cars without having to worry about anything else. With qualifying your always paying attention to the times & standings because thats what’s important & in the race your also following that as well as strategy.

    On Friday the times & standings are largely irrelevant so you can just relax & watch the cars to see who’s fast where, What car looks best through certain corners/sections, Watch all the OnBoard’s & compare speeds, gears etc… without really having to worry about missing anything (Pole lap, Overtake etc…).

    I think you can certainly look at tweaking things, But I’d really be against a total overhaul That drops Friday practice, Creates a sprint race for qualifying, Shortens the race or anything like that.

    1. Whilst I think that’s of interest to a small amount of people, I’m not sure its interesting enough to enough people for it to be properly worthwhile. I feel they could do something more interesting on the Friday as currently even though I keep up with the sport quite religiously I never ever watch practice as I just don’t have that much time to invest. I wonder whether they could make a short race with their junior drivers or something. Not completely remove practice as the teams do need it, but a sprint race, even with no points on offer, might provide some extra interest to the fans.

  21. Keep the races and quali the same. I like Friday practice as well. More support races would be good throughout the weekend so thise attending get more value for money. Would be cool to have races with their road cars using their reserve drivers. To mess with the current format seems stupid and will end up with things like the quali format from the start of last year. Of all the things that need changing the weekend format os not one other series do that and thats why they come and go but F1 endures.

  22. Could be like the Monster Cup race for Supercross here in the States. Where it’s a single race outside of the normal Supercross season and has a huge purse of $1,000,000 if you win both heat races. Something similar but scaled to F1’s size….

  23. I think having a non-championship type race where teams had to use their reserve drivers would be quite exciting..Could also have the side effect of teams going for talent rather than money with their young drivers if the non championship races had cash prize rewards for the teams instead of points as Brawn said in the interview.

  24. Josh (@canadianjosh)
    2nd March 2017, 14:09

    Don’t change the format….Would be a horrible idea….NASCAR is the perfect example of format changes that have been taking fans away from the sport.

    1. @canadianjosh Canadian Robbie here. Yeah it seems like as a reaction to falling viewership they try different formats under the guise of attracting new audience but it feels like all that does is scare away the existing one.

      1. Josh (@canadianjosh)
        2nd March 2017, 22:17

        Hey, a fellow Canuck. Yes, the leadership of NASCAR could be a college or university course on how not to run a business and when I say that, it’s not even remotely a joke.

  25. They need to figure out what they’re selling and make more of that. If it’s the cars then another race or feature might work, if it’s the drivers then get them doing something in another car.

    I think it’d be great for different venues to have their own challenge or additional competition to give the weekend more gravitas. Liberty talk about making each race more like Superbowl week but in F1 there’s such little content to promote outside the race it’s never going to get close (the NFL has the Pro Bowl, Skills showcases, allsorts that week).

    Driver-specific challenges could look like the types of races they run at the RoC but host city specific, for cities with tracks outside the city it would be a great way to connect F1 with the city and for street circuits they could use a different layout of the existing circuit or even a section of a rally course if it goes near there etc. Watching F1 WDCs run a quick time trial in kitted out (but not nearly rally spec) production cars would look great imo. For maufacturer-oriented activities (which isn’t what I think F1 is about) it’d prob look a bit like the demos that Red Bull etc do in cities already, perhaps let major sponsors put events on using the F1 cars/drivers (inc heritage).

  26. I think LH’s concept of a non-championship point race is different than what Ross Brawn and Liberty Media may envision. I think Ross(and Liberty) may want a non-championship race in the same vein as the NASCAR series has its non-points All-Star Race during its season. It is a race set aside in the schedule to cater specially direct to its fans and it used to change locations from season to season but now it’s locked to Charlotte Motor Speedway(where the teams are based). The same could be tried in F1 and run it at Silverstone using a different track configuration or another “heritage” track on the European continent presently not on the schedule.

    1. Josh (@canadianjosh)
      2nd March 2017, 22:20

      But in NASCAR there are 30 out of 40 cars/drivers with a legit shot at winning the race. Whereas in F1 it could be an all star race with only 2 or 3 or 4 guys with the shot at winning. This idea from Brawn and Lewis isn’t the way to “change” F1’s direction.

  27. They could do a race like Nascar does in Charlotte. One million dollar prize, non championship race. They could have pit team contests. 2 sprint races with lottery grid first and inverted grid based on first race second, then a longer race on Sunday for the $. I love the idea of reserve drivers too. Also doing a spec car race would be great to see who is the best. Maybe use Formula 3 cars or race prepped street cars (C63 AMG’s). That would be lots of fun. They could bounce the venue around to different countries like ROC.
    I remember watching a video of Senna in a Merc street car. It looked like he was *balls out, but the incar showed he was driving with one hand and talking most of the time. :)

  28. mark jackson
    2nd March 2017, 15:46

    Lewis continues his streak of saying something daft every time he’s asked a question. No more gimmicks please. We saw what happened when they change the qualifying format. We want to see are the best drivers, going flat out in competitive cars on the best circuits in the world… not a freaking circus act.

  29. Race format is fine in my opinion. In fact I think it’s one of the best things in Formula One nowadays. The problem isn’t the race format, but A) how easy it’s to overtake with DRS, B) how hard it’s to overtake without DRS and C) huge gaps between different teams.

    I don’t like the idea of changing race format just for the sake of changing it (“at least the ten years I’ve been here’s been the same”). Don’t fix something that isn’t broken. Soccer has had the same basic concept for more than 100 years and it’s working fine.

    If race format must be changed, I hope they come up with a solution that is fair and doesn’t make races random. I’m not necessarily dead set against race formats that make races more even (such as restarts in the same order during a race) as long as the fasters car/driver combination still has an advantage, but I’d hate to see race formats that go beyond that (such as reverse grids) or that make race results random.

  30. I like the idea of the non-championship race. Have a specific set of wings for that. Wings that are simple and give enough down force but no big non overtaking wake. To save cost, it should be held the Monday after the final race….

  31. Love the format as it is. If anything they should ADD more track time. However, the added track time shouldn’t be some gimmick. Always thought a should be added back in warm-up. Grand prix that aren’t supported by GP2 or GP3 turn out to be rather long in the tooth on the Sunday prior to the race.

    1. Proof reading seems to be a terrible skill of mine.

  32. Lewis Hamilton: “The Monaco race should be different to the others.”

    Monaco already IS different to the other races, it is a shorter distance by around something like 50 km. Actually they should change it so that Monaco is the same distance as the other Grand Prix and increase the time limit for it to 2 and a 1/2 hours, that should make this particular race substantially more challenging for the teams and drivers.

    They should also change the qualifying format back to a single 1 hour session, similar to what it was like last time in 2002 but with an unlimited number of laps for the drivers, for reasons of fairness and entertainment. Preventing drivers from trying to improve their grid position by eliminating them just because they weren’t in the top 15 or top 10 after a short amount of time is unjust and stupid.

  33. I would definitely support a one-off, spec-chassis race mid-season. No fuel-flow monitors, no suicidal tires, just all 20 drivers in same-spec cars (say Aerial Atoms) on the streets of Monaco or Brands Hatch or Laguna Seca or, better yet, the Nordschleife! Take the money/aero/engine effect out of it and put Hamilton in the same equipment as Erickson and have them duke it out over a non-constructors championship weekend. I wonder how many “superstars” would be embarrassed? Now that would be worth watching.

  34. Easy fix. Take the last testing day and turn it into a “race”.

  35. The monaco race should be not.

  36. Or we can stop trying to fix what isn’t broken…

    1. Josh (@canadianjosh)
      2nd March 2017, 22:23

      +100…. the format isn’t broke, its beautiful, well not perfect, standing starts in the rain will make the weekend format “perfect”.

  37. How about a small fleet of 4 or 5 identical spec F1 cars being sourced from somewhere, perhaps from an existing team or from previous years stock, say a 2014 spec car or even a 2010 spec car.

    Then put all the drivers names in a hat and pick out 4 or 5 to do a short race for fun, say 15 laps on a saturday after qualifying for the race is over.

    No points, only bragging rights for the winner, the chance to settle arguments over who is best and something for the fans to get excited about.

    Participation is mandatory, drivers and teams are compelled to take part. Teams must provide technical staff to prepare and operate the cars in mixed teams, working together. It could even be a charity event with the winnings going to a local cause.

    Do this on every saturday.

    Imagine it, the draw would be televised on a friday, hamilton, alonson, stoll, and hulk get picked. After qualy they all hop into identical cars and go at it, having a laugh and racing to win with no points pressure.

    I’d pay to see it.

  38. I quite like the idea of a mixture of formats i.e. a long, standard race and then perhaps also a sprint race as well. I wonder how it all could be fitted in to a weekend though?

    Perhaps a practice day on Friday, a sprint qualifying and a sprint race on Saturday and then a standard qualifying and long race on Sunday? It’s a lot to fit in though. Or maybe different formats at different weekends so maybe half a dozen sprint races throughout the season.

    At the moment I do think the Saturday is a bit wasted with just a one hour qualifying session. However, none of this is a substitute for having cars that can pass each other more easily (less aero?), more funding for smaller teams and not hiding TV coverage behind a paywall!

  39. Anybody remember the TOCA BTCC shoot out they used to have in the Super Touring era ???

  40. Why not introduce a sprint qualifying format. That drivers need to do 10 consecutive laps and the fastest driver gets pole. Have no blue flags etcetera. This will also prove to be an advantage for teams which can run a high engine mode for a longer time without breaking the engine and it should be fun to watch cars trying to overtake at all costs.

  41. As long as they have the proper championship race on the sunday, then i say do what you like for the rest of the weekend

  42. I know this is impractical and will never-ever happen, but my dream F1 format would be the same as it is now, except that the drivers drive a different car each race. At the end of the season each driver would have driven each car once. This to would show without a doubt who is the best driver and which car is the best car. So teams/cars will earn points separate to the points the drivers earn.

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