31/03/2006
NEWS STORY
In recent years, what with the sheer amount of testing, both on the track and in the factory, and the (seemingly) endless changes to the format, Fridays have lost their relevance.
On a day when the timesheets were topped by three test drivers, and race drivers chose to drive as few laps as possible, leading figures in the F1 pitlane cast doubt on the relevance of three-day race weekends.
"I think that what is happening now on Fridays is an inevitability of the rules," said Renault's Pat Symonds, "and I agree that were it not for the third cars the P1 session would be dire.
"What can make the Friday session better… Well, I think we should think a little more laterally than that and ask ourselves if we need a Friday session," he continued. "I personally am more in favour of having a two-day Grand Prix event and maybe we use Friday for testing.
"All of these things have been talked about. But I think that while we are limited on tyres and limited on the number of kilometres we want to run our engines then the inevitability is that we cut out the least productive part of running and that is Friday, particularly Friday morning. It is an inevitability and we need to look at why it occurred and is there a better solution than just trying to fix it.
"I think that all too often in Formula One there is too much heritage and tradition," he admitted. "You know the idea that we have to have three days of running. You know it took us ages to realise that we didn't need two qualifying sessions, things like this. We should be far more lateral thinking than we are."
"I think Friday could be a test day," added Norbert Haug, "not a six-hours test day, but a warm-up day or whatever and a promotion day. In the afternoon, you can give the possibility to young people to enter the race track for low costs, for promotion or whatever, because these are the guys we have got to interest for the future of the sport.
"I think there are some good ideas in place," he continued. "We do not need a three-day event. If we could use a different engine and tyres on Friday, you could certainly learn something for the weekend it could certainly be an entertaining day."
"The key to it is to make it a test day," added WilliamsF1's Sam Michael, "because you wont get the teams to do the mileage on their race cars because they are saving them for qualifying and race.
"Everyone has a certain amount of mileage they have to stick to," he continued, "so the only way to do it is to say it is a free test day, just two two-hour sessions or something like that, where you can run a test engine and put your race engine back in on Friday night if it is from the race before and combine it with other things as well."
"A year ago when the GPMA, or whatever its predecessor was called, the teams started to work together, one of the early things we looked at was just doing something different on Friday," said Nick Fry, "and it comes to what Pat said, that from a racing point of view, Friday is unnecessary and one of the ideas for Friday is to make it more of a promotional, sponsors and fun day and do different things at the circuit.
"The teams would be there, but it would do something much more outward facing, giving members of the public and fans more access to the teams. But not necessarily practicing in the way we do at the moment and that is something we should consider. I think we are all in favour of racing more and testing less and doing things that have got wider appeal than what we do at the moment."