Is qualifying becoming pointless?
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After watching todays race is dawned on me that its far too easy for the fast cars to get throught the field. I still wish DRS was x amount per race so that it could be used defensivly, as it is im finding it more and more boring.
Im tired of people saying that so and so had a great drive coming through the field because its simply far too easy now as drivers with slower cars know not to bother defending as they have no chance of keeping the faster driver behind them.
Gone are the days of Enrique Bernoldi holding up Couthard. Its simply too easy with DRS , and for me this lessens THE SHOW
@trigger – Although Bernoldi holding up Coulthard was at Monaco, where Bianchi (in a considerably slower car than the Arrows ever was) managed to score points this year by being in the right place.
Back in the day, with hour long qualifying, the top teams barely ever were caught out, and when they were (Austria 1998, Spa 1998, France 1999) it was by a slim margin, where the top teams employed a better strategy and ‘passed’ the lower teams in the pits.
As much as I hate DRS, I hated ‘pit stop overtaking’ even more. I do have to say I’d prefer a Formula Renault 3.5 system myself, too, though.
This certainly wasn’t the first time. Remember we all were wondering if it was really better to get knocked out of Q3 and save tyres than do the whole qualifying after Mark Webber went from 18th to 3rd at China in 2011.
But these were special circuimstances. First, the rain in qualying. Secondly, new Silverstone is probably the most overtaking-happy track of the calendar? of the races we’ve seen since the modification in 2010, plenty of overtakings at very different places were in order. Even in 2010, with the hard Bridgestones no KERS and no DRS.
Overtaking’s certainly a lot easier these days. But I suppose it’s still a massive disadvantage to start outside the top 10 for qualy to be pointless.
Qualifying is certainly not pointless. As mentioned above, Silverstone is not too hard to overtake at in its modern form. At tracks such as Austria we saw just how hard it was to overtake.
If qualifying is useless then why has it been two seasons since we saw a winner start from outside of the top ten (Alonso – Valencia 2012)?
And there are still plenty of recent examples of good defensive drives.
Hulkenberg at Korea last year stands out to me. Then there is Michael at Monza 2012. Or Lewis in Bahrain on worn tyres this year.
Or Lewis in Spain. In Spain Lewis beat Rosberg because he began the race in front. If Rosberg had pole he would have probably won that race.
@npf1 What is the FR3.5 qualifying system?
@plushpile I must mind my phrasing, I meant I’d rather see a FR3.5 DRS system, where every driver has a limited amount of usage.
FR3.5 does need to make its DRS a lot more effective though.. It basically doesn’t work or help overtaking at all.
PS. Qualifying is pointless, strictly speaking, but very useful in that it determines the order which the cars will line up on the grid in… :D
If I wanted to watch a race where the qualifying results are the same as the race results, week in and week out – I’d just flip on some F1 races from 10 years ago and call it a night.
@rjoconnel I don’t think that’s entirely fair. After all, Schumacher only has 68 poles to 91 wins, so sometimes the same driver as the race before won, despite someone else being on pole.
Mind you, love Schumacher, do not miss the refueling era. Especially when all the teams figured out the exact same strategy, which happened more often than not.
@OP: On the contrary, I love these recovery drives that succeed, they bring more dynamism to the racing, whereas if the fast cars would become stuck at the back, there’d be just a lot of frustration around.
Edit: I simplified it a bit. I also think that it was not too easy for either Bottas or Alonso. Just think of how close it was sometimes pulling off the moves (Bottas on Button, ALonso on Kvyat and Ricciardo, Button holding up Alonso on traction), and how Bottas got it all wrong in a similar situation with a slightly too wide exit at T9 in Melbourne.
On the other hand, I do like your idea of limited amount of DRS uses (if it’s here to stay and we have to deal with it after all, then I’d certainly tweak it this way).
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