Far-reaching rule change in Formula 1: According to the Italian media, the strategy committee of the premier class has decided to abolish an eight-year-old rule for the coming season.
Since 2014, the drivers who secured one of the top ten grid positions in qualifying were obliged to start the race on the tires on which they set their best time in qualifying segment 2. That’s enough of that.
The Italian edition of “Motorsport.com” reports that this rule will be abolished again for the coming season.
Why this turnaround? Originally, Formula 1 hoped that the introduction of the Q2 tire rule would result in greater variety in the leading group and in the strategic decisions of the teams. However, in recent years it has become more and more apparent that the top teams rely on similar strategies week after week, so there was not the hoped-for variety.
In addition, the rule did not really restrict the best teams in their choice of tires because Mercedes, Red Bull and Co. survived Q2 without any problems even on the “slower” compound. So basically they had a free choice for the race.
Does the change mess up the classification?
On the other hand, things looked different for a few teams in the midfield, who fought race for race for grid positions six to twelve.
If a team took a risk in Q2 and qualified for Q3 on the “faster” tire, the advantage of the starting position in the race was quickly gone because the pursuers from eleventh place on Sunday had the better tires and were able to stay out longer.
The rule change could be exciting, especially with a view to the first races, when the teams still lack the know-how to handle the new 18-inch tires. Nobody knows exactly how these will behave on the new cars.