Carey is right: F1 should experiment with formats – but no gimmicks

Although I consider myself a racing purist, I do agree with outgoing CEO Chase Carey’s that Formula 1 should not “straightjacket” itself for historical reasons.

My case in point is F1’s qualifying system. Through trial and error, we’ve got to an excellent Q1-Q2-Q3 knockout system that regularly serves up surprises at each stage – adding valued layers of extra competition. Compare that to previous formats like two one-hour sessions, or the pair of single-laps that were aggregated in 2005, and even the weird fuel-burn system that came afterwards. How about the elimination method, each 90-seconds, in 2016? I’d actually blanked that one from my memory!

In general, I believe that trying formats out – and being quick to realise and react to any failings, as outlined above – is a good thing. I think some of the back-to-back events we had this year were a missed opportunity to try something with the races themselves. But no gimmicks, please!

Starting point for me is a race where you have to use all of Pirelli’s three compounds, ensuring a two-stopper that perhaps leads to more performance variance on each tyre. Worth a try, right?

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