Last Updated on November 25 2023, 1:10 pm

The F1 commission met on Friday in Abu Dhabi and this body comprised of the teams, the FIA and Liberty Media representatives is the one which agrees proposed changes to the current F1 regulations. An almost unanimous decision was to scrap the alternative tyre allocation (ATA) that was part of the FIA’s push for net zero.

ATA weekends saw each driver receive two sets less of the dry weather tyres and they were mandated to run specific compounds during each qualifying session rather than having free choice.

 

 

 

Sprint weekend format under review

One decision kicked into the along grass was how the Sprint weekends will look in 2024 and whether to increase their number from the current six a year.

There seems to be universal agreement on scrapping the current pard ferme rules at Sprint weekends which mean the  teams cannot alter the setup of their cars after just the Friday morning practice. 

A proposal which is garnering support is for Sprint qualifying to replace Grand Prix qualifying on Friday afternoon with the Sprint itself being the first F1 track session on Saturday. The cars would only enter parc ferme following the Sprint and prior to the Grand Prix qualifying on Saturday afternoon.

One topic which failed to make the agenda for the F1 commission gathering was the current FIA race control use of red flags in practice. In each of the one hour sessions should the circuit be declared unsafe for running, the red flag is shown and the cars return to the pitlane. 

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Red Flag procedure criticised

However, unlike in qualifying or the Grand Prix, the clock continues to count down and so reducing the practice time available to the drivers.

For relatively short cleanups required by the marshals this is not problematic, but in both of the last two Grand Prix events this has created significant difficulties.

During practice one in Las Vegas, Carlos Sainz hit a drain cover destroying his Ferrari car and red flagging the session after just nine minutes. The session was never resumed and the rest of the teams opportunity to gather valuable data was thwarted.

Next time out in Abu Dhabi, Sainz again caused a red flag and this combined with Nico Hulkenberg hitting the wall meant almost half of practice two was lost to the drivers.

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Ricciardo wants time added on

Given half the field had surrendered their seats to junior drivers in practice one, the loss of track time due to the red flags frustrated their attempts to recover from missing their regular morning practice.

Daniel Ricciardo in the post practice session revealed the lost time due to red flags would be discussed in the drivers briefing that night. 

“For a long time it’s been like that, but it would be nice to stop the clock,” Ricciardo said. “I did FP1 but a lot of drivers didn’t [due to rookies], so they are staring down an FP2 with five laps or something.

“It would have been nice to maybe get a little bit of time back so maybe that’s something we can discuss in the Drivers’ briefing and look for a few more rule changes.”

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FIA 2 hour rule 

The FIA mandate there must be two hours between each track session where the F1 cars are involved but most regular format weekends allow an extra half hour between the sessions. This then could be used to extend a practice session by 30 minutes should that time be lost due to red flags. 

It becomes problematic when the weekend schedule is busy with F2, F3 and Porsche supercut racing alongside the Formula One action. Then times are too tight for the sessions to be extended without the knock on effect throughout the day.

Daniel Ricciardo also commented on Carlos Sainz crash which caused the red flag describing it as “strange” but laid fault at the door of the Ferrari team.

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Ferrari “running the car too low”

“It looked like they were probably running the car too low,” Ricciardo reflected.

“It looked a bit like what happened with Lando [Norris] in the last race [in Las Vegas], so I say strange because Turns 2 and 3 we should be able to do it with our eyes closed.

“They’re fast corners, but they’re easy flat. I look back at my Monaco crash last year in the swimming pool [section].”

The new breed of F1 cars which came into being for 2022 gain a lot of their downforce from the low air pressure created under the floor of the car. The lower the car can run the more it is sucked down onto the track which is something Ricciardo suggests is often too tempting for the teams to resist.

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Carlos was a “passanger”

“That’s the only thing with these cars that you have to run them so low at the rear to get the downforce out of them, you end up going into a place that becomes pretty sketchy,” said the Aussie.

“Obviously, it gets the most sketchy at high speed when the car is fully loaded and low, so you can get incidents like that which obviously aren’t nice to see. You can’t do anything, you can’t react.

“You saw Carlos, he was turning and then all of a sudden he’s Mr. Passenger. Happy to hear he was all right.”

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TV scheduling may prevent red flag rule change

Daniel then returned to the hot topic in hand concluding the lost time for practice has become significant to be ignored.

“I don’t want to go too hard on red-flag situations but maybe there are a few talking points in the drivers’ briefing.”

One further consideration is the commitment to deliver on track F1 action at specific times for the TV broadcasters. For some they are viewed on mainstream channels rather than dedicated subscription TV and it is impossible for them to extend their broadcast to cut off prime time TV commitments.

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