VENUE CHANGE FOR ALTERED QUALIFYING FORMAT ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FOR IMOLA
The qualifying format change that was set to be trialled at last month’s race at Imola has been rescheduled for later in the season.
Last month’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix was set to host a qualifying format change, separate to the Sprint format used at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
The format change would have seen the cars all sent out on the same tyre compound for the separate sections of qualifying, ie. running the hard compound during Q1, the medium compound during Q2, and the soft compound in Q3.
But, with the race at Imola cancelled as a result of extreme weather conditions hitting the region and resulting in severe flooding, the format experiment has had to be pushed out until later in the year.
PlanetF1.com understands that the format will now be used at the Hungarian Grand Prix, scheduled for race day on July 23. However, the rescheduling is still only a tentative rescheduling and may still change in the coming weeks.
The format change will have to go through a vote at F1 Commission level before being ratified, and the intent is still to run the format change at two Grand Prix weekends before season end.
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What’s the logic behind the change?
Speaking earlier in the year, Pirelli motorsport boss Mario Isola explained to PlanetF1.com the reasoning behind the proposed change – that being the reduction in the amount of tyre sets required to be transported to a Grand Prix weekend, a key consideration as F1 aims to reduce its carbon emissions through logistics.
“There is a plan from sustainability in Formula 1 where they are going to analyse every single detail to find a way to make the sport more sustainable and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030,” Isola explained.
“That’s the plan, and it is a long journey, we know that there is a lot to do. Part of the discussion was how can we reduce transportation of material, because logistics in Formula 1 – in any motorsport championship – is a big part. In this discussion, there was a proposal to reduce the number of tyres.
“Obviously, it’s not easy, because we have a current situation that is working well – they have enough tyres for practice, qualifying, and the race. But we needed to find a way to reduce the tyres. So we needed to make a clever decision and that is to do that step by step, not to damage the show, for example, we test a format that is not going to work.”