FORUMula1.com - F1 Forum

[vaptin]

Qualifying is certainly not dead but it isn't as important as it used to be as with the tyres going off so quickly and needing to stop three to five times in a race conserving tyres is much more important so we don't see the same intensity of qualifying, it's better to settle for fourth than burn up an extra set of tyres trying to better your time. So from a fan spectacle point of view, qualifying is very dull this season. At this point, we might as well skip qualifying and the drivers start from the position they finished in the last race, let's add additional ballast for the fastest cars.

Aren't these a contradiction?

Nah, because the position they finished in the last race would also have been influenced by their qualifying position in the last race.

You're not answering my question though. On the one hand, he professes that quali is certainly not dead, on the other he follows it up with 'we might as well skip quali' because it's very dull for fans.

I think he's saying its still important, just not exciting for the fans.

[racechick]

Quali is not so good any more and we never see the drivers truely flat out in the car. Why not just give them more tyres? Am I missing something here

[myownalias]

You're not answering my question though. On the one hand, he professes that quali is certainly not dead, on the other he follows it up with 'we might as well skip quali' because it's very dull for fans.

Qualifying is not dead but at the same time it's not what qualifying should be, it's not the spectacle it was last year; it's not an all out battle for pole any more; we could go back to the old one lap shootout we used to have before the current three stage qualifying as that is effectively what we have now as teams don't want to sacrifice tyres to improve their time.

[VOD80]

might be good to give them more tyres for the final shootout alright. They've messed so much with qualifying in the last few years that they probably won't be shy in doing something if it deteriorates further.

[IceManpjn]

I don't think anyone's saying that qualifying position is irrelevant. Its relevancy is certainly diminished due to all the overtaking aids, but not irrelevant. I think the "death of qualifying" has more to do with the fact that teams benefit by doing as few hot laps as possible. This ultimately leads to a less exciting qualifying for us fans. Instead of seeing a driver setting a decent time and driving his balls off to improve it (if only for a tenth or hundredth of a second) now they just have the "meh, it's good enough. let's save the tires" mentality.

On the other hand, what this does is shift the importance back onto Sunday - where it should be. So while i do agree that we are, in a sense, witnessing the "death of qualifying" I don't think it's altogether a bad thing.

More or less this.

I used to enjoy watching qualifying, as it was almost like a sort of race day of its own. I used to enjoy watching teams spar back and forth, driver A jumping ahead of driver B, then driver C pulls a fast time out of their butt only for driver B to bounce back at the last moment with fast lap. Now qualifying is barely worth watching because absolutely nothing happens.

[LewEngBridewell]

In previous years, people complained that the race was won in qualifying. Now that is no longer the case, people moan that quali is dead. Shine a LIGHT!!

In quali even today, the best cars are all still at the front, but are simply able to race each other better.

[Hammer278]

The reason for feeling quali is dead, well maybe if you compared it to the old old classic format of 4 hot laps (12 laps total) available in 1 hour, that was definitely qualifying. I still miss that format, though the current one brings a new sort of tension, there's always action on track, you are looking to see who are the big name casualties after each qualy, and there is nearly always someone!

Plus, the tyre allocation is fine. This allows the drivers for just 1 hot lap in Q3, 1 chance to get it right, if not, you've screwed it up a bit already. The importance is still there, only the drivers are having to focus a lot more on getting it right the first time. Maybe adding another set of softs per team for the weekend would help the situation, but I'd prefer to keep it as it is.