I have never seen a Manor on a hot lap in 2015. Last weekend I was able to see a full lap of Wehrlein in Q1. Toro Rosso left it late in Q1 and I got to see a full lap where one mistake would have knocked them out in Q1. We were robbed of one lap because FI failed to send Perez out. Add the laps of all the teams right at the start of qualifying and you have 3 complete hot laps on tv.
In the old system we would see cars on the Softs doing 2 or 3 laps with cool down laps and an overall mess on track for 12 minutes with cars that have no pressure getting to Q2. Then the bottom teams and the teams that messed up bolt on a set of Supersofts and try to do a lap, all in the same timeframe. This means you are either looking at one lap or all cars crossing the finish line in 30 seconds. These are the only laps that actually count. Every lap before that had no pressure because the track is the fastest at the end.
In Q2 and Q3 we also got to see a better distribution of the laps. With Ricciardo leaving it at one lap in Q3 and the Toro Rosso's gambling on one lap in Q2. This middle part used to be empty. If Ricciardo was 3 tenths faster or Hamilton 3 tenths slower the grid would have been shaken up in the way the promoters want. In a fair way because it was the driver who made the mistake.
There is an other problem with reverting to the 2015 rules because of the tires. Teams have no incentive to use the Softs in Q1. All the top teams will just wait until there is a bit less action on track, 5 minutes from the end, and do one lap on the Supersofts. In Q2 the same will probably happen for the top 4 teams. If Hamilton makes a mistake on the first lap in Q3 and Ricciardo does a great lap, Hamilton gets to fix that.
The problem with the current system is that the last 3 minutes of every session are empty. To fix that, you could just start eliminating cars 3 minutes later. With a few tweaks this format could be better for TV during qualifying and spice up the race in a fair way. Reverting to the old format would be a missed opportunity.
I think this would bring too much red/yellow flag stress, unfair chaos in these cases and it wouldn't help to mix up the grid as much.Manoah2u wrote: don't do 90-second elimination, do a 180-second elimination. or make the q1-q3 event a single grand qually event and make it a 200-second elimination event. every 200 seconds the bottom driver is eliminated, end.
a restricted amount of tire usage but a mandated amount of runs every qually session will see drivers oblidged to go out on track and set a time. the maximum amount of tires they can use during qually makes it variable on whether their time will be enough.
