F1 2021 Round 10 : Silverstone

I totally missed the qualification yesterday, forgot about it and it is all change on boards here too.

There are not really many points on offer for the sprint today are there so not much of an incentive further down the field.

I presume the final positions dictate the full starting grid?

Will give it a watch to get my head around it.

Verstappen was 7 tenths ahead in FP1 which started at half 2 but was slower in qualifying that started at 6 and Q3 ended at 7 so temperature differences would have played a part. We may learn more in the sprint race but it's still later in the afternoon than FP1 was

I hate it. The new format is a mess. I missed qually yesterday, probably the first time as far back as I can remember. The whole weekend is now out the window, trapped indoors now, can't plan anything. Na.

I'm watching continuously since about 91 and really think this experiment should be buried like elimination qualifying as its a disaster. Liberty should stop thinking they know what fans need and just carry on as it is. F1 is not Indycar.

If they want more viewers, then take it out from behind a paywall, simple.

Seems like you massively like to stereotype people to suit your own argument to be honest! I don't like the extra time commitment because I have two young children and given the number of races these days I already have trouble convincing the missus to give me the time. Not only that but Friday evening have a Scottish football match which will equally eat into my time. So for me it's just an extra commitment that I don't need regardless of whether it's good or not. I happen to think our qualifying setup is the best we've ever had, I remember well the days of 60 minute sessions where no one would come out until the last 15 minutes, so I'm not against change at all.

Yeah it infuriated me when the Irish soccer team did that under trapitoni. But we'll have to see how it works out.

This is just the first of 3 trials of the sprint format. The teams might be very Conservative in the first one and change behaviour in the others, or vice versa.

I don't know what would happen if there's a rained off Friday. It doesn't sound like an insurmountable problem though. There have been rained off Saturdays in the past. Hadn't been a big problem, it just takes an unusual approach which sounds very scary to some f1 fans who naturally oppose doing anything differently from the past. Bit the good news is that we have precedent for a rained off Saturday so it wouldn't take a new approach.

The "sprint race" idea is...ill advised, plain and simple - and exactly, who asked for something like this anyway? It's a concept that belongs to feeder series or touring championship.

There IS an extremely valid argument for not messing about with the fundamentals - qualifying, as it has been since the first F1 World Championship, is an integral part of the discipline. Yeah, the format has changed a bit over the years - from the double session Friday/Saturday to the silly experiments like the one lap shootouts, time additions and the elimination thing - to end with the passable Q1-Q2-Q3 "only the last 10 minutes count" format of today. Yet, the concept that the grid for the main event, an important part of the whole proceedings, was established by times set in qualifying is one of the CORNERSTONES of modern (as in, post-WWII) F1.

To make an easy comparison with other sports it's as if FIFA started screwing around with football regulations in a way that fundamentally changes the structure of a match or a tournament to "increase spectacle" - say, widening the distance between goalposts to have "interesting scorelines", removing goalkeepers, making goals scored from over 30 meters count double - or even better, removing the concept of offside to have more goals.

On top of that, there's the not insignificant issue of having something that "counts" on a Friday...people normally work on Fridays and most won't really be able to watch the "pre-sprint-race-qualifying" or whatever they want to call it. They did it at 6pm yesterday...I was able to watch only "thanks" to the pandemic and the fact I'm WFH, 'cause I'd normally still be in the office at that time - or, best case scenario, on the train home. People also usually have partners and families, which will not be too thrilled about planning around a three-day spanning time commitment. Between nagging wife/husband/children and F1, for the vast majority F1 will lose out and the thought will be "to heck with it".

And I haven't even touched the subject of "What happens if a driver wins the WDC by points earned in the 'qualifying' races" scenario.

Again, the goal here is completely unclear: what are they trying to achieve? "Capturing" a wider audience? This won't work at all, and neither will any idiotic/artificial way to create spectacle. That's not the issue - the issue is ACCESSIBILITY. Throw the damn pay TV deal in the toilette, make F1 free-to-air again in as many countries as possible. Heck, leverage Youtube with live races if necessary, but don't screw around with the basics, especially those who pretty much always worked, like qualifying.

@H3llR4iser

Well said. I agree with all your points. If they want to do it like this they should just have 3 FP1 sessions on Friday the qualifying and Sprint race on a Saturday and the race on a Sunday as usual. That way no one loses out. Who really wants to watch Free practice anyway bar the hard core fans like us and I find it better just watching the highlights of free practice on YouTube. Todays FP2 session was the most pointless free practice session ever. What's the point for us as a fan to watch it the qualifying grid has been decided already? My answer is known. There is no point for us to watch it. I was only half watching it.

Having the whole "Qualifying" thing on a Saturday would be a bit better; Also, "pole position" should be awarded out of the timed qualifying, not "victory" in the Mickey Mouse race - what's the sense in recording what is essentially a farce race win as "pole position"?

There are two additional issues I haven't touched, one is sporting, the other from the point of view of the spectators.

The sporting one is simple - over the years, we often had situations of drivers driving cars that aren't the fastest on track, being able to snatch pole position due to the specific way it is awarded - being blisteringly quick on the single lap. Most recently it's been the case of Leclerc, before that we had Montoya being able to rack up multiple poles in seasons where the Ferrari duo would almost lap everyone at every race and before that, the most eminent of them all - Ayrton Senna regularly sticking a Lotus on a pole position it didn't belong to. The "sprint race" simply denies that; If we had it back then, Senna would've been passed by the Williams and McLaren drivers within 10 laps, and Montoya would've trailed Schumacher an Barrichello by the end of lap 2, as it normally happened in the races. If anything, the "sprint race" removes unpredictability from the Sunday race as it will just set the cars/drivers in "racing order" - unless, that is, something happens in the guise of an accident - which, I have the feeling, is what the whole concept revolves around, hoping that Hamilton and Verstappen clash at turn 1 or something like that.

The spectators impact is something nobody spoke about - if you attend a race live, Friday is usually the "free for all" day, meaning...you can wander around any grandstand, any area of the track, take in the views from any spot, maybe decide if your current seat is really the best and scout out a spot for the next time you go. During the sessions that "count", you need to be in your assigned seat...I can completely imagine the organizers applying the same logic to the Friday qualifying to avoid complaints - afterall, if qualifying is going on and the central grandstand, for which I have a ticket for, is entirely taken by people having paid for GA only, I might get a BIT annoyed...

aha

When you think about it, the design changes to allow cars follow closer facilitates the sprint race format.

I don't think this is a "trial" for a short sighted idea going forward.

Well if that is the case I hope they refine the weekend then. As I said above have FP 1 , 2 and 3 on a Friday then have qualifying and the sprint race on a Saturday and and the race as usual on a Saturday. Actually I even think having the Sprint race first on Saturday would be better with quali after it.

Same here.

Horner and Aston Martins principle saying they both plan to go for it in the sprint race.

Anyone with nothing to lose like mazepin will likely be doing a torpedo act in this sprint race. Should be interesting.

Ooooh. Those are lovely new graphics & aerial shots of Silverstone.

Track looks absolutely roasting

it does but I’d say the drivers are swearing bullets in the car.

I dare say the lads at the back took extra time there hoping for front runners to overheat

Max with another good start.

Ah brilliant stuff max.

Lewis is keeping him under pressure though

Max was on fire at the start there, literally!

Has Mazepin spun? He haas!