Ecclestone on the return to the old qualifying format: "We hope that Ferrari catches up with Mercedes"

In the last few hours, the news that many fans were waiting for arrived, after the first two lackluster qualifying sessions of 2016. Starting from the Chinese Grand Prix, scheduled for next week on the Shanghai track, the fight for pole will go back to being that of last year. year (the so-called knock-out). The “hot chair” format will become just a distant memory.

Among the various proposals made on qualifying, as an alternative to the one "admired" in this first part of 2016, was the idea of ​​F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone which provided for a time penalty to the winner of the previous race. Mister E. himself - to whom the teams wrote a letter, also addressed to the Federation, to express their discontent with the new, criticized format - expressed the return to the old qualification system in this way: "People forget too quickly what we are trying to do to save the sport. Our intent is to try to upset the order on the starting grid with unusual starts. He gave us a hand in this Lewis Hamilton in the first two races of the season. However, his starts will not always be so slow."

In conclusion, Ecclestone addressed a thought to Ferrari: “I hope that with this return to the past, the Red team can catch up with Mercedes, otherwise the show on the track will suffer.  Until we succeed a convince all interested parties to move to a new qualification format, we will remain anchored to the previous one".

Piero Ladisa

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