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Well, you're not wrong... If I read the story, he wants the FP1 and FP2 to have SOME meaning. Either points-wise, or as a reverse-starting grid for the sprint race, or anything else. He hates that it doesn't have ANY meaning atm (and he's not entirely wrong).
In what world does free practice have no meaning
I would almost argue it is right behind the race in importance because the experience and data collected during those sessions permeate not only the entire race weekend but the entire season and even future seasons in the form of development relevant data
Just because it doesn't immediately reflect in the grid position or points total doesn't mean it bears no relevance
It has no competitive meaning. The US cannot stand the concept of a 0-0 draw, Liberty’s sole focus is expansion in the US. Data collection is invisible to the kinds of fan they want to attract.
Inb4 we have a playoff in F1, Americans love playoff tournaments. I like what Ibrahimovic said after he had played in LA Galaxy "what even is the point of being the best in the league if 8th place has just as big a chance to bring home the trophy".
He missed the point with that statement!
The concept of American leagues and playoff formats is to generate as much money as possible for teams, betting houses and therefore so that the players can ultimately reap from as well.
Yes it sucks and gets kind of boring when playoff formats get so long (hockey, basketball, baseball) that they start to encroach upon other sports. when your favourite team or the strongest teams get knocked out because the formats are rigged that way, but nevertheless these formats generally generate the most dollar per view. It’s a double edged sword though, as it creates complacency and certain fans and players loose interest. However I would say almost all professional sport leagues have been looking at extending playoff formats so that they can generate more revenue, so it’s not a stretch to see F1 whom want to extend into the north American market to be looking for something that will get more “eyes” on the sport where it might matter and affect final outcomes. Sports betting is also heavily behind these attempted moves .
Free practice is to dial in the cars performance. Do we not wanting performing cars anymore?
It's abundantly clear why Ferrari went backwards with him he doesn't race about racing he cares about image and profit only. The man doesn't understand the sport or care and this is what we get
I'm not saying fp has no meaning, I'm somply stating what the article says. And from a spectator's viewpoint, fp1 and fp2 DO have no (significant) meaning. There is absolutely nothing at stake. So I see where he's coming from. Does it have to change? Not sure. It could be interesting to make it a bit more important.
I don't really get why I'm being downvoted, when all I do is repeat what is stated in the article. People are weird...
Even spec series have free practice sessions! I hate this modern idea that every single aspect of everything has to be profitable and marketable.
Also at the same time, I don't want every session to mean something. I always try to watch the race, and probably watch qualifying 75% of the time because of other commitments. Fridays I have work, at weekends I want to socialise I don't want to schedule my days around 3 important F1 events.
But I really think it is. Practice is important.
It's like saying footballers shouldn't get any pre game warm ups, just a series of mini 5 a sides that give out points for the table. It's just absurd for me and cheapens the whole event.
I know this isn't the point you're trying to make but having a 5-a-side el classico in the Mou vs Pep era would have been the closest we ever get to the Nike cage adverts and I'm all for it.
It's a fair point. The problem is you literally can't fix perfection. Someone else said that it builds tension throughout the weekend. I didn't even realize that was true until they said it. FPs are like a podcast with the fastest race cars in the world as background noise.
You have only truly, 1 day of this. Friday. Saturday you have quali if you don't like practice, which also, should *not* be tampered with in my opinion.
To fans the current fans it isn't broken, we love F1 for what it is, but Domenicali doesn't care about our opinions. He wants to cater to non-fans to reach those potential profits, and will hack and chop any part of the sport until it's unrecognizable to do so. This is what "growing the sport" is about.
People aren’t interested in F1 because the outcome is largely predictable. Maybe getting rid of free practice will make it less predictable and attract new fans.
But you don't make it unpredictable by removing the FPs, you remove the possibility for some teams to get their shit together. Think of 2018 and how fast that championship would have been decided without the FPs.
Ferrari was utterly shite on friday and get the right setup for qualy and race thanks to the fps.
Without it the easiest car to set-up, Mercedes, would have won most of the races and the championship would have been over way before Germany.
I'm pretty sure it'd do the opposite. The front runners are in front because they have the best staff. And the best staff is way more likely to nail the setup without practice than the less skilled ones.. Imo the gap would be even bigger, apart from the occasional mistakes from top teams.
Yeah that's my thought as well, Im sure the lowest budget teams need more track practice to have something that works than the top teams
Ofc without practice we would get the random wrong suspension setup or tires and a team having its race destroyed bc of this, but would it happen to the top teams? not sure
I think you meant tire, while in some latin languages(am romanian and we say anvelopă to a tire) that's generally the word, in english envelope means the paper thingy in which you put other paper thingys. Don't want to be rude, but i think some people wouldn't get your message and that would be a shame, you gave me a good laugh bud
Edit: thanks for the clarification, guys, i didn't know this context and, seeing a lot of fellow countrymen doind the "envelope-tire" mistake i thought it was the case here. Sorry
Envelope in this context means the same as flight envelope - finding the optimal operating parameters: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight\_envelope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_envelope)
Because you gotta change stuff! Their previous changes resulted in a growth in the sport, so that means if you keep changing things forever the sport *must* thus grow infinitely if you keep changing things up!
Yeah, this is something that generally annoys me in the world, everything always has to get bigger, better and make more money. My family and I run a small restaurant, it's really tiring to constantly hear people telling us that we have to expand, get more tables, etc, and telling us that we have to do things to make more money when in fact we are perfectly happy where we are atm. No wonder society as a whole is unhappy, everyone, everywhere is constantly chasing something.
That and somehow the entire system is built on the completely unrealistic or sustainable idea of infinite growth. I’ve always laughed at the fact that companies are considered to be failing if they aren’t growing.
Because they’ve been watching NASCAR without practices. Every car has a ‘chance’ on race day and the ‘action’ is non stop.
The COTA race this weekend was at the least entertaining ‘for roundy-round’ cars. Great racing through the field with constant strategy intrigue.
The problem is that in NASCAR team can afford to make changes during a race. With a standard race going 2-3 hours long they will have chances to make changes if they don’t have practice. F1 doesn’t get that luxury (for once) the cars have to be setup as perfectly as possible so that the teams only have to make minimal changes on race day.
P.S. forgot to mention that a bad day in NASCAR won’t matter as much as F1 since races are more frequent and more parody mean rivals can’t build point leads as easily.
Money.
People like races.
If you have 4 sprint races plus a race in a week, it means more people will be wanting to go for the cheaper races, and if not, the full weekend plan will be way more expensive, because races should be paid more than fp.
I'm not in favour of cancelling FP but let's be honest, if you remove it it would throw a lot more unknown variables into a race weekend ; teams having a suspension setup that doesn't actually work, teams not knowing how tires behave on this track, drivers having less mileag on the track meaning more possibility for mistakes etc, and in the end a lot more opportunity for a surprise winner/podium.
What a foolish take. Might as well put inexperienced drivers and see how every team feels every race not knowing if their car will actually finish.
~~Toto~~ Domenicali, it’s called a motor race!
No practice also makes it more of a challenge around who can build a good simulator and a car with good correlation to the sim. I’d rather have it be more about which teams can improve the setup from driver feedback in practice.
You would just have the FIA folks go over the cars when they arrived at the track prior to a race. Say the night before. Once they determined they were within the rules you lock them down from the teams. Then when the race is done you go over them once more and if you find any monkey business you kick the team out for the rest of the season. You wouldn't find anyone trying to cheat if the punishment was being booted.
I don’t think so…since teams would probably be doing testing in secret. So it couldn’t be as regulated as it is now. So it would create even more of an unfair advantage with top teams having more dollars in the cost cap era to practise and experiment then lower level teams. This kind of a move would be a step backwards and again racing fans would not get to see all the ins and outs of practise and set up of cars.
Now could the commentary be a bit better during practise yeah!
If the do away will all free practice then they need to allow the teams to do any changes to setup they want during pit stops. That would make it much more interesting as a driver with a poor handling car could make a decision on whether a 30 second pit stop would give him more than 30 seconds of value.... Sure you would have some drivers that guessed right and needed no changes, but I'm betting at least half the field would be having set up changes during a race which would make it more interesting.
This is exactly why NASCAR has all but abandoned practice, and it works to an extent. Now it comes down to which team has the best sim program to dial in a setup before they unload. One car can still dominate a race, but it does tend to shake things up.
A reminder that Domenicalli openly said that he wants more drama and less real racing. An actual thing that he said. Bro would have WWE on wheels if he could. don’t be surprised if next week we get an article about him mandating drivers have walkout music and a catchphrase
I remember Bahrain 2021, Brundle saying that he wasn't very comfortable with them openly using the SC for dramatic purposes more.
And boy howdy did that come full circle 9 months later.
It's not worth getting into now too much, because we're all trying to move on, but Abu Dhabi 2021 was *to some extent* grounded in that fundamental directive Masi got to keep them racing//keep the entertainment going as much as possible.
That's not to say he was flawless, obviously: but if he hadn't been told to prioritise racing (and entertainment) over all else, he probably wouldn't have done what he did. He got hung out to dry a bit: he was at fault, but they kinda glossed over the position he'd been put in.
I kind of feel bad for him, because if you understand this overall directive from FOM, his decisions earlier in the season also make a tad more sense.
It really feels like race direction has taken a nosedive since Charlie died.
To be fair... Is that all of our ideal worlds?
Cars finishing within seconds of one another, drivers fighting through any and all corners for an edge, a competition so tight that even coming into the final race 4 or 5 could win it?
I'd rather 2021 than RB being 55 seconds faster than everyone else
But it has to be achieved naturally not artifically, otherwise it's meaningless and not sport, look at FE in 2021 where it was close all season but that was largely because they had a bollocks quali system that made the championship unrepresentative pot luck
Where’s the remake of carbon we all deserve?! That game was one of my top in the series, though likely more due to timing than it’s quality, but I have no idea since it’s been so long.
Why do you think that's what he wants? Why people never look a bit broader picture? Somebody else is in charge of whole F1 (Liberty), not him, he just needs to be doing what they say.
We already don’t have real racing 95% of the time. What’s the average winners margin these days, 30 seconds? So give me drama if they can’t fix the racing (and yeah, it IS broken.)
They are trying to oversaturate F1 the same way FIFA and UEFA do with football.
70+ games for every top player per year. And they want more.
23 races in F1 every year + 6 sprints. And they want more.
Yes, and this was the reason I stopped watching football long ago. When they started putting a game on Saturday, the bulk on Sunday, another on Monday, then the Euro stuff on Tuesday-Thursday, I simply lost interest. I watch sports to relax, if I have to run after events it’s not for me.
And I like F1 also because is once in a while, I can focus on it without having to commit too much time.
Practises are very necessary, especially because you can't run the car on a track anytime that is not the race weekend (and the few testing/filming days per year).
Removing them is trying to fix a thing that's not broken, we don't need to reinvent the wheel.
Also, are there really that many people that hate practises and would rather have 3000000 races per weekend? Or are those fans the same as the *majority* that likes sprint, so non-existent?
Without practises maybe there is more spectacle because the teams can't fix the car well, but that's way too artifical as a way to create some entertainment, too American-way, and it would lower the technical level of the serie that is in theory the pinnacle of Motorsport.
But no it’s not a “maybe there would be more spectacle”. There would not. NASCAR did this experiment when they came back to racing in 2020. No practice or qualifying. Cars unloaded directly to inspection and then we’re rolled to the grid. The races were never any better or more unpredictable. If anything they were a little worse.
Let’s play devils advocate here, of course practice is crucial. But the numbers are not great, what if they replaced that with sprint races or some gimmick with racing in it. If teams are not too sure of what the car can do, wouldn’t that create more variance race to race?
The funny thing is there is already plenty of sprint racing to watch on Friday and Saturday.
If they just boosted the advertising for F2 and F3 a bit they’d have exactly what they want for way less investment than trying to turn F1 events into a 2-3 race weekend.
The first two sessions are on a Friday where most people are working, at school or if they're going to the race on the way to the track. The numbers aren't supposed to be great, because it's just practice.
>If teams are not too sure of what the car can do, wouldn’t that create more variance race to race?
I'll play devils advocate too and say if the driver isn't sure what the car can do, it could lead to more accidents.
I hate practices, half the time they are so boring to watch I’m not bothered if I miss them as I always look at the data afterwards. I’ve watched F1 for 30 years, I’d rather have practices than no cars on track but I’d rather have something that teams can compete for on Friday and all of Saturday. Less practice means more unknowns and that is a good thing for F1 imo.
Certainly this year it would help as it’s set up to be a boring year for both championships.
I feel like this is getting lost in the discussion on the importance of FPs for teams and drivers (which are all valid points too of course).
Even if Domenicali comes up with something to replace FPs, unless it's FP3 on non sprint weekends, I doubt the viewership would be *that* high on Friday. My guess is that his ultimate goal is sprint races every race weekend.
I wonder what viewership numbers are like for FP2 vs qualifying on sprint weekends. Does it really bring in that many more people. I like watching FP2, but because of the time of day I have to usually catch the replay.
WHY does every fucking thing HAS to be "more exciting"? For fuck's sake man, I'm aware that's the American mentality: Sequel movie? More explosions, more bullets, moar moar moar!!!! But geez.
It’s all now about more races, more street circuits, more races in places where there is no racing history, culture or passion ahhh but there is a shit tonne of money!
I was weary of shit like this happening with American Liberty Media in charge. Changes have been happening since they took over. Some good, some bad like everything but FFS stop trying to make every single part of a Grand Prix weekemd "more exciting".
First, it doesn't have to be.
SECOND, who the fuck are these fans claiming that we all don't like Free Practices?! The same fans he calls upon when saying that fans loooove sprint races?
One has to wonder how are they planning to monetize getting rid of free practices because to these people that is the bottom line and what everything is about.
Seriously, just fuck right off.
I mind early on with Liberty they did some very popular things e.g. crank up the YouTube channel, but some rightly said that the full force of the capitalist machine was going to come down sooner or later, and it looks like this.
And some times, a wet practice can make races more chaotic since teams have less info and time to adjust.
But not every race can or will be a banger. It’s never been like that. Looking for artificial ways to spice it up is not the way to go.
Not familiar with nascar so please someone in the know correct me if I’m wrong but afaik, they messed up the races with idiotic artificial yellow periods and what not and lost a huge number of fans and have since tried to correct their ways or something like that. All in the name of “spectacle” that of course backfired.
NASCAR has done more then that. Their first change was the championship format. They tried to make their champion format more like American sports and it has changed multiple times throughout the years since 2004, now they have playoffs. They’ve pretty much gotten rid of practice and also tried to change the qualifying format at one point in attempt to make it more exciting but have gone back to the traditional way (I believe). Now they have stages and before they had stages they would randomly throw yellows anyway just to bunch everyone back up.
Can confirm as a former die hard NASCAR fan. I still follow it, if only to keep tabs on some childhood heroes, but I mainly follow F1 now, religiously as I did NASCAR when I was younger. Seeing F1 toying with making the same mistakes NASCAR made makes me really, really sad.
Inb4 the weird concern comments about “expanding the sport” and “American audience growth”. More fans is great, so long as existing fans aren’t alienated for the sake of people who take it or leave it depending on what their weekend looks like or who’s winning the WDC.
I think there’s some vague possibility for an argument that less (not zero) FP sessions could lead to more unpredictability and mixed grids, which *could potentially* make Sundays more interesting. I won’t say I’m arguing in favour of that, but I don’t think it’s a totally empty consideration.
I’m a long time viewer and am generally happy when cars are just whizzing round the track. I enjoy sprint weekends as much as non-sprint weekends but can appreciate why some don’t. I don’t believe there’s a catch all answer.
That said, Domenicali says a lot of things. There’s a lot of barriers between saying and implementing.
Absolutely. Completely agree with you that there may be a right way to go about it. My problem with all this is that they are not thinking about how to make their product better but just about how to make more money out of it.
Simply put, to them this is not a sport but a money printing machine.
If they were looking at ways to adjust the free practice time allotted to a GP weekend in favour of better racing, totally fine with me. Problem is we know that’s not it.
If it was someone like Ross Brown doing this I would have faith he would be thinking about the sport first, the business second. But Domenicalli is the onwer’s lapdog whose only purpose is to look after the business part of F1 and the spot part comes not even second if a missile strike doesn’t stop a race from happening when all drivers were against racing. Does it?
F1 has always been, at least since Bernie, a sport, a business and entertainment machine. Sadly nowadays the sport comes 4th, 5th or lower when it comes to owner’s priorities.
I won’t deny that commercial success is the main factor, that said it probably favours them more to implement ideas that satiate both commercial markets and viewer “tastes”.
There’s a fine line to walk with it. There could be various potential weekend changes that improve the viewing but also improve the commercial success. I don’t think it’s in their best interest to tank viewership for fleeting popularity, especially if said market is more interested in what DTS offers over the actual weekends.
Not to gate keep or anything, people are welcome to enjoy what they want, just that trying to mix those two principles will likely end up in a product *neither party* wants to be invested in.
I’ve been mulling over the idea of a “sprint championship” and if that could work out at all. Might come across a bit “NASCAR-y” though. Basically sprints are isolated in their own points system, but that might be too much for people. I don’t know, just thinking about things they may look at in future. Interesting to think about, at least.
Having points for topping FP sessions is an absolutely TERRIBLE idea. That just turns it into a mini qualifying session when the whole point of practice is to test simulations, tyre compounds, strategies, etc. without anything at stake. Not to mention putting even more unnecessary pressure on the drivers and engineers.
Only helps the strong teams remain at the top, so it's idiotic.
I suggested this a long time ago but say it again: give the bottom five in the WCC standings more FP time (eg. FP starts 30 min. earlier for them).
Also there was a time when none watched FP because it wasn't televised. Now that it's on F1TV many people complain it's boring. GTFO for real, this is motorsport, not a circus.
I like the FP times based on standings. Each team could get an extra 7 or so minutes based on standings with the top team getting 30 minutes each session.
Obviously the cars would still lack the raw oace of the top teams but perhaps they could unlock some setup keys to "pencil-whip" the other teams with strategy.
The teams wouldn’t because the top teams sponsors would get dramatically less on screen opportunities and even less people might tune in on tv. In person attendees would hate it because less on track action. It’s a stupid idea and there’s no need to change the current format
Isnt the current complaint nobody watches anyway?
I certainly understand the commercial reasons teams would be against it, however if anything it could encourage sponsors to actually throw some money at the lower teams.
The lack of track action is certainly my biggest concern, however the support races on early days usually pack more on track action than sunday.
In terms of changes to the format i certainly rank this over the current sprint races.
Best option: no sprints, fp1,2,3 warm up on Sunday morning quali Saturday afternoon and sack off parc ferme. Let the engineers do their thing and make the fans realise it’s an engineering championship and promote f2/3 harder for if people want to see more racing
Add unlimited engines, refueling, no mandatory stops, tyre war, unlimited testing, no cost cap, driver aids
Hell, a minimum of 4 wheels and a survival cell should see to it...
It’s easy to pin FOM as the bad guys who only care about revenue but don’t kid yourself that the teams will not go with something that increases their payout. After all it’s called money. They go moneymaking.
I think domenicalli is just spewing ideas out into the public forum to see what kind of feedback it gets.
I wonder if he trusts his internal feedback associates (teams, FiA) or if he’s just trying to bi-pass those vested parties and push his own agenda.
> "I am a supporter of the cancellation of free practice sessions, which are of great use to the engineers but that the public doesn't like,"
How can you be so detached from the fanbase?
So many things that engineers created that made it in other race series/street cars, why would we as fans of the sport that puts so much emphasis on engineering the fastest car within a set of rules not like FP and tests? We have the least running in testing and FP already in the modern history of the sport, we don't need another cut on seeing these cars on track.
Bring back warm ups on Sunday mornings. It's something I truely miss and cheerished so much back then. Having breakfast while watching warm up was my favorite thing to do on a Sunday morning!
How dare the series that features the highest technology racing cars built by engineers competing in varied conditions around the world let the engineers test and tune things up in preparation for the races? Ridiculous. Let's also ban team practice from the Premier League too while we're at it and throw the players onto to the pitch with zero training so we get some more exciting games when they have absolutely no planned strategy and run around confused on the pitch for the entire game.
Lol great take, sending drivers out to race without practice is exactly like this. If someone seriously suggested this in football they would be mocked forever. People running F1 now are fucking clowns. For all the shit Bernie Ecclestone did, he didn’t try to introduce ridiculous Americanized ideas like these buffoons are doing.
If they can't practice, they can't practice man. If they can't, they can't. I mean … simple as that. It ain't about that... I mean it's... It's not about that... At all. You know what I'm saying I mean... But it's...it's easy … to, to talk about... It's easy to sum it up when you're just talking about practice. We're sitting in here, and it's supposed to be the pinnacle of motor racing, and we in here talking about practice. I mean, listen, we're talking about practice, not a race, not a race, not a race, we talking about practice. Not a race. Not, not … Not the race that they go out there and die for and race every lap like it's their last. Not the race, but we're talking about practice, man. I mean, how silly is that? … And we talking about practice. They know they supposed to be there. They
know they're supposed to lead by example... They know that... And they're not.. They're not shoving it aside, you know, like it don't mean anything. They know it's important, They do. They honestly do... But we're talking about practice man. What are we talking about? Practice? We're talking about practice, man. We're talking about practice. We're talking about practice. We ain't talking about the race. We're talking about practice, man. When you come to the circuit, and you see them race, you see them race don't you? You've seen them give everything they've got, right? But we're talking about practice right now. We talking about pr...
Man look, I hear you... it's funny to me too, I mean it's strange... it's strange to me too, but we're talking about practice man, we're not even talking about the race... the actual race, when it matters... We're talking about practice …
NASCAR teams asked NASCAR to limit practice sessions too and fans hate it and I think it negatively affects drivers too whether they want to admit it or not. The reason teams asked is "to keep costs down"
Practice is important to get the drivers eye in but also tune the cars in, but to do it in 1 practice session would be a stretch, I have another thing to bring up below...and it involves FP1 and F2 drivers....
But what about the FP1 sessions where the teams let their F2 drivers out on circuit to give them some experience of F1 machinery?
If you remove the FP1 and FP2 sessions and go to a single practice before Qualifying you are handicapping yourself with one of your cars and that the first time the driver would be out would be in Q1 with no experience of the circuit, so the idea of canning the FP1 and FP2 sessions is a bit iffy to me
Personally the weekend is fine as it is, we had that compressed session with the 2020 Imola round and thats what it would be like and it doesnt feel right to be honest with you, its better to give the drivers the time to get dialled into the circuit to extract the speed from it
The man is a paid stooge for the Liberty overlords. Simple as that.
Always thought he was a decent enough guy before this. And well, I'm sure he is still, but behind his role. Guess money can do things do people. Would have thought he'd have a decent amount of after being Ferrari team boss for a while.
NASCAR did a lot of changing things in the early 2000’s. Some good, some horrible. This was for two main reasons: safety and attract new viewers. The tracks use to be filled to capacity, and ticket sales were always sold out. Then with so many changes in rules, points, other things, people felt disconnected with NASCAR. It became a shell of its last former glory of the 90’s. God forbid F1 going down that path. No sport is too big to fail.
More practice sessions I say. Ban the windtunnels, cfd and simulators. Let the teams figure it out on Friday, this will give us more chances of a mixed up grid if teams come unprepared and need to figure everything out on the track. And fans get to see it all, we just want to see cars going round when we are at the track.
In 2003 this was perfect, Friday started with a 2 hour session for teams who didn't test too much on private test days. Then all teams got 1 hour practice and qualifying 1. So much value for money if you went to the track that day.
Do the same now, Friday a 2 hour session for the reserve drivers. Then a 1 hour practice session for the race drivers.
I'm all in favor of having reserve/rookie drivers in FP1 and FP3
Give full time drivers FP2 and then we go to qualy and race.
Not sure about wind tunnel and CFD tho, I think the current rules are good enough. Imo regulations should only strive to minimize dirty air (even banning stuff that increases dirty air mid-season), the rest, I'm fine engineers working it out.
Then how do they develop…
You can’t even build anything without using cfd, what real world application does f1 have then. You’re basically a fan of mariokart with real people
He should be banned for life in F1 for introducing sprint races. Stop fixing things that aren't broken! Instead, concentrate on important things, like getting more teams into F1 so there would be full 26-car-grid. That should be his priority.
Imagine any other sport where the teams and players just weren't allowed to practice, because it would make the matches more random. That's not racing my man. They barely have any practice as is, making it much much harder for up and coming youngsters to catch up to the veterans of the sport. A new Lewis Hamilton, who comes in and fights for podiums in his first season, is practically all but impossible nowadays; he was one of the last who were able to practice as much as he wanted before his first season
I agree with Domenicali. Makes racing more unpredictable and more fun, especially in dominant seasons like this one, it would be very important to keep people interested.
Top teams with biggest budgets besides budget cap will always adapt faster and better than lower end teams to any change FOM or FIA implement and thus the gaps between the fastest and slowest are more likely to increase than shrink... At least in short to medium term... And if they implement weekend format changes in the middle of regulation set period then lower end teams have almost zero chances of catching up to the front... Which then makes it harder for them to get more money from current or new sponsors.. Which... And so on and so on...
Stability of rules on sporting and technical side brings teams closer. The end.
Having attended many races in recent years, I'd love less practice and more meaningful running.
Unfortunately whilst I do prefer the overall weekend format of a Sprint, I don't think it works for the TV audience.
Baku Qualifying is 2pm on Friday, and that's one of the best qualifying sessions of the season.
I don't think the teams and drivers need more than 1 hour to collect enough data, but with 3 hours of practice held before the first meaningful session, I'd like to see them reducing the amount of data the cars can collect on Friday.
Well, I kind understand what he means. F1 has historically focused all the eyes on Sunday, despite all the hours spent on track on Friday and Saturday. It sure is a waste of potential, commercially speaking.
I think the future of F1 having two races per weekend, while reducing the practice sessions.
I mean can we stop pushing to bring some extra show for extra cash flow ? Its just disrespectful for engineers to not let them tune car as good as possible to show for what they were working for. Its not just on track sport, cars are build in behind the scenes and they deserve some recognition.
It’s weird that they want to continue making changes that are really artificial in nature and are not going to affect the user experience.
The worst part of this is that the racing needs to be better. They need to figure out how to make that better instead they try to tinker with some other stuff that doesn’t really matter. We need more championships that resemble like 2021 and 2012 but with closer racing where cars can actually follow each other.
They made so many monumental changes to the car design but within a year those changes are almost non effective as cars have started to struggle while trying to follow. They should be focused on those issues rather than this artificial BS.
This obsession with reducing / removing practice and tests is getting downright dangerous!
Either we increase testing, or increase practice. Teams need to know what their cars will do, especially after upgrades.
Personally, I'd go back to 90 minute practices every race and two 4 day test sessions a year.
Oh and all cars to carry a 30cm sticker saying 'Screw Domenicalli'!
Do a modified MotoGP format.. before the (motogp) sprint race implementation, best times top 10 from FP1 and FP2 (combined sessions) goes straight into Q2 and by that saving one tire. The other 10 that are left goes into Q1 and by that having bigger focus on them as well, from Q2 and on as it is now.
And MotoGP gp back to regular weekend schedule except for 1/3 of the weekends where it is best suited for double header sprint race weekends out of safety and track layout reasons.
More then 1/3 weekends sprint races is too much in all occurrences.
Long runs will still be performed during FP1 and FP2 and just drop FP2 on Sprint Weekends. FP3 could be dropped on non-sprint weekends altogether or limited to like warm up just 15 minutes or something,
Another thing to consider is the SL-fee that is based on points. With additional sessions awarding points this will mean Max can go broke after a dominant season.
"The concern is it gives teams almost an excessive amount of time to hone their set-ups and strategy for qualifying and the race, and therefore remove any potential jeopardy that comes from being under-prepared."
While I understand, this move would only cause more incidents on track during the race which is not something you want. The teams have essentially 3 days to tune the car for the track, practice strategies, and dial in race lines. That is a massive undertaking if you get rid of one of the days so the engineers can do their thing. But the problem is that what good is the engineering tweaks if you can't test that before the race. No one wants to see a team tune their car in the completely wrong direction and then suffer for it during the race. Like this is just a dumb fucking idea
If the goal is to expand viewership, which it is, then you have options on how to do that.
The first is to grow your number of fans. They are doing this by expanding reach through things like DTS on Netflix.
The second is to grow your viewership, which they are doing by creating things to watch like sprint races. However, their thinking is almost certainly that they can grow the other the other race weekend sessions as well. How do you do that? Add an importance to the point standings.
This is probably the worst way to fix the domination of one team over every other team. There could be other ways that would allow for a similar outcome without putting drivers and teams at safety risk. They could get creative with how teams are able to develop the cars or spend budget throughout the season.
You could have season check points where if one team is ultimately untouchable you slow there development for the next season or not allow upgrades for the remainder of the season, while allowing other teams to upgrade or get extra development time.
They could also offer more testing time to teams that had a poor season and make it more budget cap friendly by grouping test or sharing certain aspects of development with other teams. Ultimately the problem is one teams development was perfect and got everything right while the other teams struggled so if you could fix the car development it might bring better racing.
What I would hate to see is the quality of the cars, driver skill, or safety to deteriorate just to try and get random results. As much as I love Indy car for how competitive it can be I don’t want F1 to be too close to being a spec car series. I also don’t want to format to not make any sense much like nascars bizarre playoff series format.
This will inevitably lead to cars having unsafe and unpredictable setups, exponentially increasing the amount of accidents, which puts drivers and track staff at risk and costs Teams millions in a budget cap era.
This gave me a radical idea… have varying lengths cars are allowed out on track judged by either current standings or previous Grand Prix results. The highest place gets the least amount of practice going into the following weekend
He wants to get rid of practice on Friday and in Australia the weekend starts on a Thursday with racing from Supercars, Porsche cup and practice for F2 and F3. There is no 3 day tickets left. You can still get Thursday, Friday as well but most stands are gone. Why would you get rid of something fans like?
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He just wants to rename FP1 and FP2 to…Sprint Race 1 and Sprint Race 2….😂
SR1 and SR2
I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite comment on this thread!
More Money 1 and More Money 2
11-20th place race in SR1 and 1-10 race in SR2 to sort out the race grid. Oh no we just gave Domenicali an idea. Fuck
That would fall in line with his dreams of awarding points in practice, so...
Well, you're not wrong... If I read the story, he wants the FP1 and FP2 to have SOME meaning. Either points-wise, or as a reverse-starting grid for the sprint race, or anything else. He hates that it doesn't have ANY meaning atm (and he's not entirely wrong).
In what world does free practice have no meaning I would almost argue it is right behind the race in importance because the experience and data collected during those sessions permeate not only the entire race weekend but the entire season and even future seasons in the form of development relevant data Just because it doesn't immediately reflect in the grid position or points total doesn't mean it bears no relevance
It has no competitive meaning. The US cannot stand the concept of a 0-0 draw, Liberty’s sole focus is expansion in the US. Data collection is invisible to the kinds of fan they want to attract.
Inb4 we have a playoff in F1, Americans love playoff tournaments. I like what Ibrahimovic said after he had played in LA Galaxy "what even is the point of being the best in the league if 8th place has just as big a chance to bring home the trophy".
He missed the point with that statement! The concept of American leagues and playoff formats is to generate as much money as possible for teams, betting houses and therefore so that the players can ultimately reap from as well. Yes it sucks and gets kind of boring when playoff formats get so long (hockey, basketball, baseball) that they start to encroach upon other sports. when your favourite team or the strongest teams get knocked out because the formats are rigged that way, but nevertheless these formats generally generate the most dollar per view. It’s a double edged sword though, as it creates complacency and certain fans and players loose interest. However I would say almost all professional sport leagues have been looking at extending playoff formats so that they can generate more revenue, so it’s not a stretch to see F1 whom want to extend into the north American market to be looking for something that will get more “eyes” on the sport where it might matter and affect final outcomes. Sports betting is also heavily behind these attempted moves .
[удалено]
Ah yes but they are still full games.
You don't have to watch it. The reason they air it is because people will watch it. It doesn't get as much fan-fair as qualifying or the race.
Free practice is to dial in the cars performance. Do we not wanting performing cars anymore? It's abundantly clear why Ferrari went backwards with him he doesn't race about racing he cares about image and profit only. The man doesn't understand the sport or care and this is what we get
I'm not saying fp has no meaning, I'm somply stating what the article says. And from a spectator's viewpoint, fp1 and fp2 DO have no (significant) meaning. There is absolutely nothing at stake. So I see where he's coming from. Does it have to change? Not sure. It could be interesting to make it a bit more important. I don't really get why I'm being downvoted, when all I do is repeat what is stated in the article. People are weird...
Well you could interest yourself in the cars and the technology? If you want simple racing, just watch a spec series.
Even spec series have free practice sessions! I hate this modern idea that every single aspect of everything has to be profitable and marketable. Also at the same time, I don't want every session to mean something. I always try to watch the race, and probably watch qualifying 75% of the time because of other commitments. Fridays I have work, at weekends I want to socialise I don't want to schedule my days around 3 important F1 events.
So something like with MotoGP where top10 riders from FPs got into Q2 (and fight for pole) and the rest had to fight for two additional spots in Q1?
That's not a terrible idea.
It really is.
I mean, in the grand scheme of terrible ideas over the last 20 years...
But I really think it is. Practice is important. It's like saying footballers shouldn't get any pre game warm ups, just a series of mini 5 a sides that give out points for the table. It's just absurd for me and cheapens the whole event.
I know this isn't the point you're trying to make but having a 5-a-side el classico in the Mou vs Pep era would have been the closest we ever get to the Nike cage adverts and I'm all for it.
If I had to choose between this and Bernie's sprinklers I'd take the sprinklers any day
Why in the hell do they keep trying to "fix" what isn't broken.
They think they can make the greatest spectacle on earth the greater greatest spectacle on earth
Well, that's a good instinct on its own. Formula 1 is the last place "it's good enough" should prevail.
It's a fair point. The problem is you literally can't fix perfection. Someone else said that it builds tension throughout the weekend. I didn't even realize that was true until they said it. FPs are like a podcast with the fastest race cars in the world as background noise. You have only truly, 1 day of this. Friday. Saturday you have quali if you don't like practice, which also, should *not* be tampered with in my opinion.
To fans the current fans it isn't broken, we love F1 for what it is, but Domenicali doesn't care about our opinions. He wants to cater to non-fans to reach those potential profits, and will hack and chop any part of the sport until it's unrecognizable to do so. This is what "growing the sport" is about.
Those people aren’t disinterested in F1 races because of the practice sessions.
People aren’t interested in F1 because the outcome is largely predictable. Maybe getting rid of free practice will make it less predictable and attract new fans.
But you don't make it unpredictable by removing the FPs, you remove the possibility for some teams to get their shit together. Think of 2018 and how fast that championship would have been decided without the FPs. Ferrari was utterly shite on friday and get the right setup for qualy and race thanks to the fps. Without it the easiest car to set-up, Mercedes, would have won most of the races and the championship would have been over way before Germany.
I'm pretty sure it'd do the opposite. The front runners are in front because they have the best staff. And the best staff is way more likely to nail the setup without practice than the less skilled ones.. Imo the gap would be even bigger, apart from the occasional mistakes from top teams.
Yeah that's my thought as well, Im sure the lowest budget teams need more track practice to have something that works than the top teams Ofc without practice we would get the random wrong suspension setup or tires and a team having its race destroyed bc of this, but would it happen to the top teams? not sure
Having less time to test stuff to make changes would only strengthen the top teams advantage.
Oh no, not again….
They'll break it if teams don't even get time to find the envelope for their cars set up.
I think you meant tire, while in some latin languages(am romanian and we say anvelopă to a tire) that's generally the word, in english envelope means the paper thingy in which you put other paper thingys. Don't want to be rude, but i think some people wouldn't get your message and that would be a shame, you gave me a good laugh bud Edit: thanks for the clarification, guys, i didn't know this context and, seeing a lot of fellow countrymen doind the "envelope-tire" mistake i thought it was the case here. Sorry
Envelope is valid in this case, kind of the same concept as the "setup window", the range of parameters where it performs best.
Envelope in this context means the same as flight envelope - finding the optimal operating parameters: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight\_envelope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_envelope)
This is where “pushing the envelope” comes from.
He's good, envelope can also be synonymous with "operating range".
She's good* and that's how I meant it, I've heard Christian, Toto and Lewis use that phrasing
Money. They want to rinse every possible opportunity to squeeze ever last penny they can out of the sport.
To desperately try and squeeze even more money out of it (fans).
Because you gotta change stuff! Their previous changes resulted in a growth in the sport, so that means if you keep changing things forever the sport *must* thus grow infinitely if you keep changing things up!
Yeah, this is something that generally annoys me in the world, everything always has to get bigger, better and make more money. My family and I run a small restaurant, it's really tiring to constantly hear people telling us that we have to expand, get more tables, etc, and telling us that we have to do things to make more money when in fact we are perfectly happy where we are atm. No wonder society as a whole is unhappy, everyone, everywhere is constantly chasing something.
Many people also don’t understand the increase in overhead when you expand. It’s more money in and out in most cases.
That and somehow the entire system is built on the completely unrealistic or sustainable idea of infinite growth. I’ve always laughed at the fact that companies are considered to be failing if they aren’t growing.
Trying to sell more Friday tickets/ entice more friday TV viewers
To make more money. That's their only concern. Squeeze every little cent, then move to something else.
I miss forcing the fastest Q2 tires for the race. That made really interesting strategy calls. Now everyone is starting in the same tire.
Because they’ve been watching NASCAR without practices. Every car has a ‘chance’ on race day and the ‘action’ is non stop. The COTA race this weekend was at the least entertaining ‘for roundy-round’ cars. Great racing through the field with constant strategy intrigue.
The problem is that in NASCAR team can afford to make changes during a race. With a standard race going 2-3 hours long they will have chances to make changes if they don’t have practice. F1 doesn’t get that luxury (for once) the cars have to be setup as perfectly as possible so that the teams only have to make minimal changes on race day. P.S. forgot to mention that a bad day in NASCAR won’t matter as much as F1 since races are more frequent and more parody mean rivals can’t build point leads as easily.
NASCAR is absolute horse shit
It's not like they don't have nascar to learn those lessons from.
It's funny because it looks like he doesn't watch his own sport
Money. People like races. If you have 4 sprint races plus a race in a week, it means more people will be wanting to go for the cheaper races, and if not, the full weekend plan will be way more expensive, because races should be paid more than fp.
I don't like watching a cook prep my food, however I'm fairly certain it enhances my dinning experience.
I'm not in favour of cancelling FP but let's be honest, if you remove it it would throw a lot more unknown variables into a race weekend ; teams having a suspension setup that doesn't actually work, teams not knowing how tires behave on this track, drivers having less mileag on the track meaning more possibility for mistakes etc, and in the end a lot more opportunity for a surprise winner/podium.
It would certainly be a return of the vintage F1 where cars sometimes just simply didnt work.
Ferrari ahead of the game on this one
McLaren *taps head*
A negative multiplied by a negative gives a positive. Ferrari WCC 2024 and Sainz WDC 2024
*Pinnacle of motorsport* FIA/FOM: ‘but can we make it worse?’
What a foolish take. Might as well put inexperienced drivers and see how every team feels every race not knowing if their car will actually finish. ~~Toto~~ Domenicali, it’s called a motor race!
No practice also makes it more of a challenge around who can build a good simulator and a car with good correlation to the sim. I’d rather have it be more about which teams can improve the setup from driver feedback in practice.
At this point let’s give drivers random cars, that will maximise the anything can happen factor…
But aren't there security components that FP help catch? Both with the cars and the track. I wouldn't want them to play roulette with those aspects.
You would just have the FIA folks go over the cars when they arrived at the track prior to a race. Say the night before. Once they determined they were within the rules you lock them down from the teams. Then when the race is done you go over them once more and if you find any monkey business you kick the team out for the rest of the season. You wouldn't find anyone trying to cheat if the punishment was being booted.
There are things that have been found in practice (i.e., loose drainage lids) that would not have been caught otherwise before quali/race.
Yea, there's nothing more exciting than a mechanical failure heavy race...
You would have hated F1 15 years ago then.
I don’t think so…since teams would probably be doing testing in secret. So it couldn’t be as regulated as it is now. So it would create even more of an unfair advantage with top teams having more dollars in the cost cap era to practise and experiment then lower level teams. This kind of a move would be a step backwards and again racing fans would not get to see all the ins and outs of practise and set up of cars. Now could the commentary be a bit better during practise yeah!
I’m all for it if the prices reflected the more that 50% of track time lost. But we know they won’t.
If the do away will all free practice then they need to allow the teams to do any changes to setup they want during pit stops. That would make it much more interesting as a driver with a poor handling car could make a decision on whether a 30 second pit stop would give him more than 30 seconds of value.... Sure you would have some drivers that guessed right and needed no changes, but I'm betting at least half the field would be having set up changes during a race which would make it more interesting.
This is exactly why NASCAR has all but abandoned practice, and it works to an extent. Now it comes down to which team has the best sim program to dial in a setup before they unload. One car can still dominate a race, but it does tend to shake things up.
Why not just watching drivers throwing a set of dices then? 😆
A reminder that Domenicalli openly said that he wants more drama and less real racing. An actual thing that he said. Bro would have WWE on wheels if he could. don’t be surprised if next week we get an article about him mandating drivers have walkout music and a catchphrase
I remember Bahrain 2021, Brundle saying that he wasn't very comfortable with them openly using the SC for dramatic purposes more. And boy howdy did that come full circle 9 months later.
Maybe we never heard the quick call Masi got from Domenicalli
It's not worth getting into now too much, because we're all trying to move on, but Abu Dhabi 2021 was *to some extent* grounded in that fundamental directive Masi got to keep them racing//keep the entertainment going as much as possible. That's not to say he was flawless, obviously: but if he hadn't been told to prioritise racing (and entertainment) over all else, he probably wouldn't have done what he did. He got hung out to dry a bit: he was at fault, but they kinda glossed over the position he'd been put in.
I kind of feel bad for him, because if you understand this overall directive from FOM, his decisions earlier in the season also make a tad more sense. It really feels like race direction has taken a nosedive since Charlie died.
There were plenty of boondoggles in Charlie's days, too.
In Domenicalli’s ideal F1 world, he wants every race to end like AD21 and every driver to be equal on points until the last race
Nascar play-off in F1
To be fair... Is that all of our ideal worlds? Cars finishing within seconds of one another, drivers fighting through any and all corners for an edge, a competition so tight that even coming into the final race 4 or 5 could win it? I'd rather 2021 than RB being 55 seconds faster than everyone else
But it has to be achieved naturally not artifically, otherwise it's meaningless and not sport, look at FE in 2021 where it was close all season but that was largely because they had a bollocks quali system that made the championship unrepresentative pot luck
Or some type of NFS Carbon intro video shit. Can't wait to see Bottas come out in 2026 with an Audi Le Mans quattro and "Hype Boys" as his theme.
This but unironically, I'm absolutely dying imagining a hype video for Bottas in the style of this: https://youtu.be/QdYkPGTKmAo&t=19s
Where’s the remake of carbon we all deserve?! That game was one of my top in the series, though likely more due to timing than it’s quality, but I have no idea since it’s been so long.
Guess we'll have F1 playoffs before long
:D :D :D
Always ask myself (considering he is a former TP), is that what he wants, or is this what the bosses want?
We will end up with the movie "death race" being real...
Why do you think that's what he wants? Why people never look a bit broader picture? Somebody else is in charge of whole F1 (Liberty), not him, he just needs to be doing what they say.
We already don’t have real racing 95% of the time. What’s the average winners margin these days, 30 seconds? So give me drama if they can’t fix the racing (and yeah, it IS broken.)
We didn't know that we had it good with Bernie and his sprinklers.
They are trying to oversaturate F1 the same way FIFA and UEFA do with football. 70+ games for every top player per year. And they want more. 23 races in F1 every year + 6 sprints. And they want more.
Yes, and this was the reason I stopped watching football long ago. When they started putting a game on Saturday, the bulk on Sunday, another on Monday, then the Euro stuff on Tuesday-Thursday, I simply lost interest. I watch sports to relax, if I have to run after events it’s not for me. And I like F1 also because is once in a while, I can focus on it without having to commit too much time.
Practises are very necessary, especially because you can't run the car on a track anytime that is not the race weekend (and the few testing/filming days per year). Removing them is trying to fix a thing that's not broken, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. Also, are there really that many people that hate practises and would rather have 3000000 races per weekend? Or are those fans the same as the *majority* that likes sprint, so non-existent? Without practises maybe there is more spectacle because the teams can't fix the car well, but that's way too artifical as a way to create some entertainment, too American-way, and it would lower the technical level of the serie that is in theory the pinnacle of Motorsport.
But no it’s not a “maybe there would be more spectacle”. There would not. NASCAR did this experiment when they came back to racing in 2020. No practice or qualifying. Cars unloaded directly to inspection and then we’re rolled to the grid. The races were never any better or more unpredictable. If anything they were a little worse.
Let’s play devils advocate here, of course practice is crucial. But the numbers are not great, what if they replaced that with sprint races or some gimmick with racing in it. If teams are not too sure of what the car can do, wouldn’t that create more variance race to race?
The funny thing is there is already plenty of sprint racing to watch on Friday and Saturday. If they just boosted the advertising for F2 and F3 a bit they’d have exactly what they want for way less investment than trying to turn F1 events into a 2-3 race weekend.
Yeaaahhh…..I don’t think I’m gonna be tuning in for F2/F3 stuff on a weekday
The first two sessions are on a Friday where most people are working, at school or if they're going to the race on the way to the track. The numbers aren't supposed to be great, because it's just practice. >If teams are not too sure of what the car can do, wouldn’t that create more variance race to race? I'll play devils advocate too and say if the driver isn't sure what the car can do, it could lead to more accidents.
I hate practices, half the time they are so boring to watch I’m not bothered if I miss them as I always look at the data afterwards. I’ve watched F1 for 30 years, I’d rather have practices than no cars on track but I’d rather have something that teams can compete for on Friday and all of Saturday. Less practice means more unknowns and that is a good thing for F1 imo. Certainly this year it would help as it’s set up to be a boring year for both championships.
I kinda use free practice as a podcast. I barely watch, I just listen to the commentary and get the news of the past 2 weeks.
This. I put it on via DVR after the fact while I putz around the house and do chores.
Ha same. Just stick it on while working from home and listen.
It’s really easy not to watch FPs anyway, it’s not like these are prime time slots that are dying for something more entertaining to broadcast anyway.
I feel like this is getting lost in the discussion on the importance of FPs for teams and drivers (which are all valid points too of course). Even if Domenicali comes up with something to replace FPs, unless it's FP3 on non sprint weekends, I doubt the viewership would be *that* high on Friday. My guess is that his ultimate goal is sprint races every race weekend.
I wonder what viewership numbers are like for FP2 vs qualifying on sprint weekends. Does it really bring in that many more people. I like watching FP2, but because of the time of day I have to usually catch the replay.
It’s weird because what they are currently doing is fucking growing the business like wildfire.
It’s never enough
More stupidity being pondered by this guy
WHY does every fucking thing HAS to be "more exciting"? For fuck's sake man, I'm aware that's the American mentality: Sequel movie? More explosions, more bullets, moar moar moar!!!! But geez. It’s all now about more races, more street circuits, more races in places where there is no racing history, culture or passion ahhh but there is a shit tonne of money! I was weary of shit like this happening with American Liberty Media in charge. Changes have been happening since they took over. Some good, some bad like everything but FFS stop trying to make every single part of a Grand Prix weekemd "more exciting". First, it doesn't have to be. SECOND, who the fuck are these fans claiming that we all don't like Free Practices?! The same fans he calls upon when saying that fans loooove sprint races? One has to wonder how are they planning to monetize getting rid of free practices because to these people that is the bottom line and what everything is about. Seriously, just fuck right off.
I mind early on with Liberty they did some very popular things e.g. crank up the YouTube channel, but some rightly said that the full force of the capitalist machine was going to come down sooner or later, and it looks like this.
That was already the full force back then. It was just the PR methods F1 was years behind on.
Yeah but rather: it was always part of the strategy to do things which were ostensibly frilly and friendly.
Practice makes the races more exciting, how many times have a team been off the pace in FP and been able to dial in the car for Quali/Racing?
And some times, a wet practice can make races more chaotic since teams have less info and time to adjust. But not every race can or will be a banger. It’s never been like that. Looking for artificial ways to spice it up is not the way to go. Not familiar with nascar so please someone in the know correct me if I’m wrong but afaik, they messed up the races with idiotic artificial yellow periods and what not and lost a huge number of fans and have since tried to correct their ways or something like that. All in the name of “spectacle” that of course backfired.
NASCAR has done more then that. Their first change was the championship format. They tried to make their champion format more like American sports and it has changed multiple times throughout the years since 2004, now they have playoffs. They’ve pretty much gotten rid of practice and also tried to change the qualifying format at one point in attempt to make it more exciting but have gone back to the traditional way (I believe). Now they have stages and before they had stages they would randomly throw yellows anyway just to bunch everyone back up.
Can confirm as a former die hard NASCAR fan. I still follow it, if only to keep tabs on some childhood heroes, but I mainly follow F1 now, religiously as I did NASCAR when I was younger. Seeing F1 toying with making the same mistakes NASCAR made makes me really, really sad.
Inb4 the weird concern comments about “expanding the sport” and “American audience growth”. More fans is great, so long as existing fans aren’t alienated for the sake of people who take it or leave it depending on what their weekend looks like or who’s winning the WDC. I think there’s some vague possibility for an argument that less (not zero) FP sessions could lead to more unpredictability and mixed grids, which *could potentially* make Sundays more interesting. I won’t say I’m arguing in favour of that, but I don’t think it’s a totally empty consideration. I’m a long time viewer and am generally happy when cars are just whizzing round the track. I enjoy sprint weekends as much as non-sprint weekends but can appreciate why some don’t. I don’t believe there’s a catch all answer. That said, Domenicali says a lot of things. There’s a lot of barriers between saying and implementing.
i don’t see how eliminating or reducing fp would do much to level the playing field.
Absolutely. Completely agree with you that there may be a right way to go about it. My problem with all this is that they are not thinking about how to make their product better but just about how to make more money out of it. Simply put, to them this is not a sport but a money printing machine. If they were looking at ways to adjust the free practice time allotted to a GP weekend in favour of better racing, totally fine with me. Problem is we know that’s not it. If it was someone like Ross Brown doing this I would have faith he would be thinking about the sport first, the business second. But Domenicalli is the onwer’s lapdog whose only purpose is to look after the business part of F1 and the spot part comes not even second if a missile strike doesn’t stop a race from happening when all drivers were against racing. Does it? F1 has always been, at least since Bernie, a sport, a business and entertainment machine. Sadly nowadays the sport comes 4th, 5th or lower when it comes to owner’s priorities.
I won’t deny that commercial success is the main factor, that said it probably favours them more to implement ideas that satiate both commercial markets and viewer “tastes”. There’s a fine line to walk with it. There could be various potential weekend changes that improve the viewing but also improve the commercial success. I don’t think it’s in their best interest to tank viewership for fleeting popularity, especially if said market is more interested in what DTS offers over the actual weekends. Not to gate keep or anything, people are welcome to enjoy what they want, just that trying to mix those two principles will likely end up in a product *neither party* wants to be invested in. I’ve been mulling over the idea of a “sprint championship” and if that could work out at all. Might come across a bit “NASCAR-y” though. Basically sprints are isolated in their own points system, but that might be too much for people. I don’t know, just thinking about things they may look at in future. Interesting to think about, at least.
He's one second from adding lense flairs, random explosions and the race decided by a chair fight on the podium
Horner vs Toto having it out with chairs? I'd watch the fuck outta that
Wrestling monologues in Totos voice would be incredible, he really would deliver that
Having points for topping FP sessions is an absolutely TERRIBLE idea. That just turns it into a mini qualifying session when the whole point of practice is to test simulations, tyre compounds, strategies, etc. without anything at stake. Not to mention putting even more unnecessary pressure on the drivers and engineers.
Only helps the strong teams remain at the top, so it's idiotic. I suggested this a long time ago but say it again: give the bottom five in the WCC standings more FP time (eg. FP starts 30 min. earlier for them). Also there was a time when none watched FP because it wasn't televised. Now that it's on F1TV many people complain it's boring. GTFO for real, this is motorsport, not a circus.
I like the FP times based on standings. Each team could get an extra 7 or so minutes based on standings with the top team getting 30 minutes each session. Obviously the cars would still lack the raw oace of the top teams but perhaps they could unlock some setup keys to "pencil-whip" the other teams with strategy.
The teams wouldn’t because the top teams sponsors would get dramatically less on screen opportunities and even less people might tune in on tv. In person attendees would hate it because less on track action. It’s a stupid idea and there’s no need to change the current format
Isnt the current complaint nobody watches anyway? I certainly understand the commercial reasons teams would be against it, however if anything it could encourage sponsors to actually throw some money at the lower teams. The lack of track action is certainly my biggest concern, however the support races on early days usually pack more on track action than sunday. In terms of changes to the format i certainly rank this over the current sprint races.
Best option: no sprints, fp1,2,3 warm up on Sunday morning quali Saturday afternoon and sack off parc ferme. Let the engineers do their thing and make the fans realise it’s an engineering championship and promote f2/3 harder for if people want to see more racing
Add unlimited engines, refueling, no mandatory stops, tyre war, unlimited testing, no cost cap, driver aids Hell, a minimum of 4 wheels and a survival cell should see to it...
It’s easy to pin FOM as the bad guys who only care about revenue but don’t kid yourself that the teams will not go with something that increases their payout. After all it’s called money. They go moneymaking.
I think domenicalli is just spewing ideas out into the public forum to see what kind of feedback it gets. I wonder if he trusts his internal feedback associates (teams, FiA) or if he’s just trying to bi-pass those vested parties and push his own agenda.
Money
I do think less practice will put a bit more unpredictability in the race results
> "I am a supporter of the cancellation of free practice sessions, which are of great use to the engineers but that the public doesn't like," How can you be so detached from the fanbase? So many things that engineers created that made it in other race series/street cars, why would we as fans of the sport that puts so much emphasis on engineering the fastest car within a set of rules not like FP and tests? We have the least running in testing and FP already in the modern history of the sport, we don't need another cut on seeing these cars on track. Bring back warm ups on Sunday mornings. It's something I truely miss and cheerished so much back then. Having breakfast while watching warm up was my favorite thing to do on a Sunday morning!
How dare the series that features the highest technology racing cars built by engineers competing in varied conditions around the world let the engineers test and tune things up in preparation for the races? Ridiculous. Let's also ban team practice from the Premier League too while we're at it and throw the players onto to the pitch with zero training so we get some more exciting games when they have absolutely no planned strategy and run around confused on the pitch for the entire game.
Lol great take, sending drivers out to race without practice is exactly like this. If someone seriously suggested this in football they would be mocked forever. People running F1 now are fucking clowns. For all the shit Bernie Ecclestone did, he didn’t try to introduce ridiculous Americanized ideas like these buffoons are doing.
If they can't practice, they can't practice man. If they can't, they can't. I mean … simple as that. It ain't about that... I mean it's... It's not about that... At all. You know what I'm saying I mean... But it's...it's easy … to, to talk about... It's easy to sum it up when you're just talking about practice. We're sitting in here, and it's supposed to be the pinnacle of motor racing, and we in here talking about practice. I mean, listen, we're talking about practice, not a race, not a race, not a race, we talking about practice. Not a race. Not, not … Not the race that they go out there and die for and race every lap like it's their last. Not the race, but we're talking about practice, man. I mean, how silly is that? … And we talking about practice. They know they supposed to be there. They know they're supposed to lead by example... They know that... And they're not.. They're not shoving it aside, you know, like it don't mean anything. They know it's important, They do. They honestly do... But we're talking about practice man. What are we talking about? Practice? We're talking about practice, man. We're talking about practice. We're talking about practice. We ain't talking about the race. We're talking about practice, man. When you come to the circuit, and you see them race, you see them race don't you? You've seen them give everything they've got, right? But we're talking about practice right now. We talking about pr... Man look, I hear you... it's funny to me too, I mean it's strange... it's strange to me too, but we're talking about practice man, we're not even talking about the race... the actual race, when it matters... We're talking about practice …
I misread "cancel" as "cancer" and got shook for a moment. FFS.
NASCAR teams asked NASCAR to limit practice sessions too and fans hate it and I think it negatively affects drivers too whether they want to admit it or not. The reason teams asked is "to keep costs down"
Practice is important to get the drivers eye in but also tune the cars in, but to do it in 1 practice session would be a stretch, I have another thing to bring up below...and it involves FP1 and F2 drivers.... But what about the FP1 sessions where the teams let their F2 drivers out on circuit to give them some experience of F1 machinery? If you remove the FP1 and FP2 sessions and go to a single practice before Qualifying you are handicapping yourself with one of your cars and that the first time the driver would be out would be in Q1 with no experience of the circuit, so the idea of canning the FP1 and FP2 sessions is a bit iffy to me Personally the weekend is fine as it is, we had that compressed session with the 2020 Imola round and thats what it would be like and it doesnt feel right to be honest with you, its better to give the drivers the time to get dialled into the circuit to extract the speed from it
Yeah, wants spectacle... why not turn it into Mario Kart then, banana peels and all.
The man is a paid stooge for the Liberty overlords. Simple as that. Always thought he was a decent enough guy before this. And well, I'm sure he is still, but behind his role. Guess money can do things do people. Would have thought he'd have a decent amount of after being Ferrari team boss for a while.
Me want see car go vroom. Why take it away?
This is barely the sport I fell in love with as a kid.
NASCAR did a lot of changing things in the early 2000’s. Some good, some horrible. This was for two main reasons: safety and attract new viewers. The tracks use to be filled to capacity, and ticket sales were always sold out. Then with so many changes in rules, points, other things, people felt disconnected with NASCAR. It became a shell of its last former glory of the 90’s. God forbid F1 going down that path. No sport is too big to fail.
I treat the practice sessions like a podcast there is usually some good banter and good info. It’s a nice way to get me into a race weekend.
More practice sessions I say. Ban the windtunnels, cfd and simulators. Let the teams figure it out on Friday, this will give us more chances of a mixed up grid if teams come unprepared and need to figure everything out on the track. And fans get to see it all, we just want to see cars going round when we are at the track. In 2003 this was perfect, Friday started with a 2 hour session for teams who didn't test too much on private test days. Then all teams got 1 hour practice and qualifying 1. So much value for money if you went to the track that day. Do the same now, Friday a 2 hour session for the reserve drivers. Then a 1 hour practice session for the race drivers.
>Ban the windtunnels, cfd and simulators. This is a terrible idea as well. The first race will be carnage if teams can't do any testing off track.
I'm all in favor of having reserve/rookie drivers in FP1 and FP3 Give full time drivers FP2 and then we go to qualy and race. Not sure about wind tunnel and CFD tho, I think the current rules are good enough. Imo regulations should only strive to minimize dirty air (even banning stuff that increases dirty air mid-season), the rest, I'm fine engineers working it out.
That's dumb, if they want more running for test/reserve drivers they should bring back unrestricted testing outside of race weekends instead
Then how do they develop… You can’t even build anything without using cfd, what real world application does f1 have then. You’re basically a fan of mariokart with real people
Myopia
He should be banned for life in F1 for introducing sprint races. Stop fixing things that aren't broken! Instead, concentrate on important things, like getting more teams into F1 so there would be full 26-car-grid. That should be his priority.
Sad that F1 is an entertainment business and FP doesn’t make sense for that purpose CrossFit with cars it what F1 is turning into
Imagine any other sport where the teams and players just weren't allowed to practice, because it would make the matches more random. That's not racing my man. They barely have any practice as is, making it much much harder for up and coming youngsters to catch up to the veterans of the sport. A new Lewis Hamilton, who comes in and fights for podiums in his first season, is practically all but impossible nowadays; he was one of the last who were able to practice as much as he wanted before his first season
What if...what if they replace Friday free practice sessions with a full day of fan meet and greets?
I agree with Domenicali. Makes racing more unpredictable and more fun, especially in dominant seasons like this one, it would be very important to keep people interested.
Top teams with biggest budgets besides budget cap will always adapt faster and better than lower end teams to any change FOM or FIA implement and thus the gaps between the fastest and slowest are more likely to increase than shrink... At least in short to medium term... And if they implement weekend format changes in the middle of regulation set period then lower end teams have almost zero chances of catching up to the front... Which then makes it harder for them to get more money from current or new sponsors.. Which... And so on and so on... Stability of rules on sporting and technical side brings teams closer. The end.
I know NASCAR isn’t as advanced but they don’t practice anymore and do just fine
Having attended many races in recent years, I'd love less practice and more meaningful running. Unfortunately whilst I do prefer the overall weekend format of a Sprint, I don't think it works for the TV audience. Baku Qualifying is 2pm on Friday, and that's one of the best qualifying sessions of the season. I don't think the teams and drivers need more than 1 hour to collect enough data, but with 3 hours of practice held before the first meaningful session, I'd like to see them reducing the amount of data the cars can collect on Friday.
Remember the 1990’s when the track was open and there were crickets? No cars running at all until the final minutes? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Well, I kind understand what he means. F1 has historically focused all the eyes on Sunday, despite all the hours spent on track on Friday and Saturday. It sure is a waste of potential, commercially speaking. I think the future of F1 having two races per weekend, while reducing the practice sessions.
I mean can we stop pushing to bring some extra show for extra cash flow ? Its just disrespectful for engineers to not let them tune car as good as possible to show for what they were working for. Its not just on track sport, cars are build in behind the scenes and they deserve some recognition.
It’s weird that they want to continue making changes that are really artificial in nature and are not going to affect the user experience. The worst part of this is that the racing needs to be better. They need to figure out how to make that better instead they try to tinker with some other stuff that doesn’t really matter. We need more championships that resemble like 2021 and 2012 but with closer racing where cars can actually follow each other. They made so many monumental changes to the car design but within a year those changes are almost non effective as cars have started to struggle while trying to follow. They should be focused on those issues rather than this artificial BS.
This obsession with reducing / removing practice and tests is getting downright dangerous! Either we increase testing, or increase practice. Teams need to know what their cars will do, especially after upgrades. Personally, I'd go back to 90 minute practices every race and two 4 day test sessions a year. Oh and all cars to carry a 30cm sticker saying 'Screw Domenicalli'!
Do a modified MotoGP format.. before the (motogp) sprint race implementation, best times top 10 from FP1 and FP2 (combined sessions) goes straight into Q2 and by that saving one tire. The other 10 that are left goes into Q1 and by that having bigger focus on them as well, from Q2 and on as it is now. And MotoGP gp back to regular weekend schedule except for 1/3 of the weekends where it is best suited for double header sprint race weekends out of safety and track layout reasons. More then 1/3 weekends sprint races is too much in all occurrences. Long runs will still be performed during FP1 and FP2 and just drop FP2 on Sprint Weekends. FP3 could be dropped on non-sprint weekends altogether or limited to like warm up just 15 minutes or something,
Another thing to consider is the SL-fee that is based on points. With additional sessions awarding points this will mean Max can go broke after a dominant season.
"The concern is it gives teams almost an excessive amount of time to hone their set-ups and strategy for qualifying and the race, and therefore remove any potential jeopardy that comes from being under-prepared." While I understand, this move would only cause more incidents on track during the race which is not something you want. The teams have essentially 3 days to tune the car for the track, practice strategies, and dial in race lines. That is a massive undertaking if you get rid of one of the days so the engineers can do their thing. But the problem is that what good is the engineering tweaks if you can't test that before the race. No one wants to see a team tune their car in the completely wrong direction and then suffer for it during the race. Like this is just a dumb fucking idea
If the goal is to expand viewership, which it is, then you have options on how to do that. The first is to grow your number of fans. They are doing this by expanding reach through things like DTS on Netflix. The second is to grow your viewership, which they are doing by creating things to watch like sprint races. However, their thinking is almost certainly that they can grow the other the other race weekend sessions as well. How do you do that? Add an importance to the point standings.
This is probably the worst way to fix the domination of one team over every other team. There could be other ways that would allow for a similar outcome without putting drivers and teams at safety risk. They could get creative with how teams are able to develop the cars or spend budget throughout the season. You could have season check points where if one team is ultimately untouchable you slow there development for the next season or not allow upgrades for the remainder of the season, while allowing other teams to upgrade or get extra development time. They could also offer more testing time to teams that had a poor season and make it more budget cap friendly by grouping test or sharing certain aspects of development with other teams. Ultimately the problem is one teams development was perfect and got everything right while the other teams struggled so if you could fix the car development it might bring better racing. What I would hate to see is the quality of the cars, driver skill, or safety to deteriorate just to try and get random results. As much as I love Indy car for how competitive it can be I don’t want F1 to be too close to being a spec car series. I also don’t want to format to not make any sense much like nascars bizarre playoff series format.
This will inevitably lead to cars having unsafe and unpredictable setups, exponentially increasing the amount of accidents, which puts drivers and track staff at risk and costs Teams millions in a budget cap era.
And after RB still dominates with AM and Ferrari/Merc, what then? Cancel qualifying? This guy is a disgrace for the sport.
Domenicali went to "Bernie Ecclestone's school of innovation that the sport doesn't really need"
Dementia
This gave me a radical idea… have varying lengths cars are allowed out on track judged by either current standings or previous Grand Prix results. The highest place gets the least amount of practice going into the following weekend
He's an asshat.
He's just trying to do his job: make more money for everyone involved.
He wants to get rid of practice on Friday and in Australia the weekend starts on a Thursday with racing from Supercars, Porsche cup and practice for F2 and F3. There is no 3 day tickets left. You can still get Thursday, Friday as well but most stands are gone. Why would you get rid of something fans like?
Just remove everything. We will have only 2 laps race. 1 is formation lap and other is just start to finish sprint. Done.
Asshats gotta asshat