New Formula One Qualifying Was Bollocks

New Formula One Qualifying was useless

• Nothing happened in the last minutes
• It’s all about saving tyres
• Mercedes still dominates

The F1 wanted to do something with qualification to make Saturday interesting for the fans. Therefore they introduced the New Formula One Qualifying system, but it turned out to be a disaster. F1 already decided to go back to the previous format.

Formula One is as boring as ever. Something must be done with Forumla One, since it is becoming worse and worse. We say this mantra every year and even Formula One Group chief executive Bernie Ecclestone agrees. Now they introduced a New Formula One Qualifying system and somehow managed to make F1 even more boring than it was before. These guys are geniuses in an awkward way. They had a few months to work out a good system and it only lasted for one session…

The New Formula One Qualifying is the most boring in history

In the 66-year-long history of the sport, there wasn’t as boring a session as the New Formula One Qualifying is. F1 introduced the format to make Saturdays more entertaining, yet it turned out at the Australian Gran Prix that qualis had become worse than free practices.

According to the new Formula One Qualifying system, the car in the last place on the time chart eliminates in every 90 seconds after the first seven minutes. This must guarantee the thrilling excitement – that was what the guys behind this rule were thinking. However, in the actual session where the new Formula One Qualifying made its debut, there were hardly some cars on the track after the first few minutes, ruining the session for fans and internet betting players.

Since usually there is a well-established power ranking for every weekend based on the free practices, drivers with an okay time from the first minutes of Q1 were able to sit in the garage, saving their tyres and watching the slowest guys agonizing on the track in vain. The new Formula One Qualifying system is a disaster. It was obvious for online sportsbooks in the EU that Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg would occupy the first two slots on the grid thanks to the well-advanced Mercedes technology.

The Ferrari guys, Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Räikkönen thought second row was cool enough, so they abandoned work well before the end of Q3. Well, instead of being more exciting, the quali was boring as hell in the end. The track was empty in the last minutes and that is a disgrace for the sport.

Ecclestone: New Formula One Qualifying is pretty crap

Bernie Ecclestone was quick to criticise the New Formula One Qualifying format after the session had been wrapped up. The F1 supremo was watching on television and he revealed that he thought the quali was awful. He also expressed that he did not like the idea of the New Formula One Qualification at all.

He said, “I watched it, but I have to say I wasn’t enthusiastic about it from day one. It was pretty crap. But this is what we’ve got, until we can change it. The only thing about this [format] is that the quick guys could have run off the road, or done anything a little bit silly, and then you would get a mixed-up grid, which is what we wanted. It just happens that Mercedes are still very, very good.”

Ecclestone also said that switching back to the previous format also resulted Mercedes taking the first row, but this is what team leaders agreed on after the disastrous debut of the new system. Ecclestone thinks that the biggest problem with the qualification at the moment is its predictability. Excitement would be needed, but at the moment, it’s almost 100% that Hamilton wins. If he makes a mistake, his teammate would be there.

Ecclestone has an unorthodox idea about handing time penalties for the race winners on the next weekend’s qualification to ensure a mixed grid. That would result in more exciting races for those who bet on sports in the UK, but it seems to be very artificial. 

Eventually the race itself was a spectacle compared to qualifying. Yes, the perfect start of the two Ferraris and Lewis Hamilton’s mistake was needed, but it was clear that the Scuderia can challenge the Mercedes guys on Sunday. Even though this Australian GP was also won by Nico Rosberg in the end…