The brand new format with two qualifying sessions will make its debut in the Formula 1 world championship over the weekend in Baku. According to information gathered by Motorsport.com, at the Formula 1 Commission meeting scheduled for next Tuesday, the representatives of the team, FIA and Liberty Media will formally formalize a decision already taken in recent days with their vote.
The format of the weekend will not change on Friday, proposing the usual program foreseen for weekends with the sprint race, i.e. the free practice session in the morning and the qualifying session in the afternoon. The first difference compared to the ‘Sprint’ weekends will be related to the validity of the results, since the qualifying verdicts will define the starting grid for the Grand Prix scheduled for Sunday.
The biggest news will be on Saturday. Instead of the FP2 session (round criticized as dedicated only to long-runs but with single-seaters already in parc fermé) there will be an unprecedented qualifying session, which will define the starting grid for the afternoon sprint race. The details regarding the format of the session are not yet known, but it will not be (as assumed) a single lap qualification. The most accredited hypothesis is that of three rounds, as in the traditional qualification, but of a shorter duration.
It will not be easy for the teams to define the strategy for using the tires. As in all ‘Sprint’ weekends, each driver will have two sets of hard tyres, four medium and six soft tyres. It is foreseeable that one set of ‘red’ tires could be used in the FP1 session, three in the following qualifying session, leaving two sets available for Saturday’s qualifying.
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