Too much bullshit, idiots, ridiculous »: F1 reacts to another distressing Saturday

Even if the Silver Arrows once again dominated the front row in Bahrain as in Australia, Toto Wolff is worried about the image portrayed by a Formula 1 that seems to be groping forward: “It’s not just Q3 that deserves changes. We’ve seen that things didn’t go well in Q1 and Q2 either. The grid isn’t shaken up by these qualifications, so I hope we’ll have reasonable discussions,” declared the leader of Mercedes. “When I spoke with Jean Todt last week, he told me he wanted a structured approach to things. He thought there might be things to learn from Q1 and Q2. We’re no longer in a position to try another experimental qualifying session in China. We would look like idiots.”

It is thus in strong terms that the Austrian calls to do away with this system: “I can tell you that if someone blocks a change and we are still stuck with this system, we must crucify them in the paddock! Is that politically correct?.”

Probably not; but a sacrifice indeed seems necessary. Supposed to enhance the show on Saturday, the new qualifying system is turning into an absurdity in reality, with very few cars on track, teams seeming lost in their calculations, and sometimes no suspense left after only a few minutes, as Toto Wolff also noticed from the pit wall: “You see drivers getting out of their car even though they have enough time to go back on track and improve. Perez is on a fast lap but it’s too late for him to finish it. Wehrlein could have made another attempt but his team was not aware. In Q3, half of the drivers have to give up because time is running out. In the end, I have no words…”

Eric Boullier is of the same opinion as his counterpart at Mercedes: “We all made our position clear in Melbourne: go back to the old system. Unanimously. We will not move from this stance. Keeping Q1 or Q2? It was even worse here than in Melbourne during these two sessions. Like us, most of the teams had only one set of tires for Q2. You do your lap quickly, before the eliminations start, and then you wait in the garage. It’s just ridiculous,” said the Frenchman, competition director at McLaren.

Kimi Räikkönen, for his part, has never been accustomed to political correctness. The experienced Finn put the recent controversies into a broader and even more worrying context: “There is so much politics and nonsense in F1, it’s frankly crazy sometimes,” denounced Iceman, for whom “people who don’t really follow F1 must look at us and say, ‘But they are stupid, what are they doing?’“.

Never before has a qualification system triggered so much criticism. We could quickly return to the old protocol, probably as soon as the next Grand Prix in China. Unless, of course, the world of F1 has other surprises in store for us…