F1 News
Is this the solution for the qualifying chaos at Monza?
- GPblog.com
Qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix has been quite a chaos for some years now. Traffic jams, caused by drivers trying to find a slipstream, are causing dangerous situations. Peter Windsor doubts whether the current measures are sufficient to deal with this.
The FIA had indicated a new directive for this weekend to prevent the kind of congestion we saw in 2019. Drivers must maintain a minimum average speed during the laps entering and exiting the pits. That was reasonable, but it did not happen that Lewis Hamilton crashed into slow-moving cars almost at full speed during the third free practice.
Superpole' for certain circuits
“It kind of worked, but it could’ve been better. We could’ve had some really nasty incidents. It does make one think that in these situations on some circuits we need to think about one-lap qualifying. Because I’ve seen a lot of accidents because of speed differential and it is something that really scares me. I hate to see that sort of incident we saw this morning with Lewis.”
Qualifying over one lap is certainly not new in Formula 1. The so-called 'Superpole' principle was taken over from the World Superbike Championship by F1 in 2003. The fans did not like the format, in which the drivers set a lap time one by one, however, and so this only lasted for three seasons.