19/03/2016
NEWS STORY
Whilst millions around the world watched today's qualifying session on their TVs in horror, only one has the power to change things, Mr Bernard Charles Ecclestone.
The F1 supremo isn't attending this weekend's season opener and instead opted to watch the session from the comfort of his Knightsbridge office. He was not impressed.
Consequently he has called on team bosses to meet ahead of tomorrow's race to discuss the matter with the aim of resolving things in time for Bahrain in two weeks.
"If we can get them to agree to change and we agree to change, we can change it," he told Reuters. "Or if we get all the teams to agree with us, we can change it."
The Briton was keen to deny responsibility for the format, widely seen as farcical and anti-climactic.
This idea was the FIA's," he said. "I had another idea. My idea was to leave the old qualifying alone and whoever won the previous race, or finished second or third down to 10th, would have time added to their qualifying time. You just add the times on.
"Qualifying would stay as it was in the old days," he continued, "which is what I'd like, and it would have changed the grid completely so at least for two thirds of the race you'd get a lot of racing."
Whilst fans took to social media to vent their frustration and anger, drivers and team bosses were equally forthcoming.
"I don't understand why all the people are so surprised," said Sebastian Vettel. "It was going to happen, there were plenty of engineers and other brains that, basically, had sort of predicted what would happen.
"It was crazy at the beginning with all the cars lining up at the end of the pitlane, and everybody trying to set a lap time to avoid the risk of being eliminated. And then it was very quiet, same in Q2 and equally in Q3. So I don't think that it is more exciting, it's definitely the wrong way to go."
"This new system did not work and really we should apologise to the fans," added Christian Horner. "We have not put on a show for them at all today which is a shame, especially for the first race of the season.
"It's not good for qualifying to be done with five minutes to go, drivers and cars need to be out on track fighting for pole up until the last second. We should accept that we tried it, it didn't work and the important thing is we learn from it and address it quickly. Qualifying needs to build up to a crescendo, not what we saw here today."
In the face of such widespread derision of the new format, providing the teams agree unanimously, a letter can then be presented to the FIA and the necessary changes could be in place by Bahrain.
It is currently thought that either the old format is revived or a combination of the old and new, which would mean Q1 and Q2 run to the new elimination format and Q3 to the old format. Then again, Ecclestone might well opt to push his agenda.
"Some of the promoters expressed a wish for a better Saturday show," Toto Wolff told reporters, referring to the decision to change the format in the first place. "Two proposals were on the table, one was reverse grid and the other was that one. We voted for the least worst.
"You can't say no, no, no, all the time," he admitted, "so this time we felt maybe it's worth exploring and see how it is and the conclusion is it is not good.
"There are two schools of thought. We could return to what we had before. If we move to a different format, we should think carefully about what it should be."
Check out our Saturday gallery, here.