Autosportfoto

F1 Bahrain GP: Give qualifying a chance – Perez

Sergio Perez says fans should give new much maligned elimination qualifying format an opportunity in Bahrain this weekend, even if he admits its retention is a potential benefit for Force India.

Introduced for Australia, the panned format was set to be replaced with last year's knockout format, but the FIA failed to offer this as an option for teams to agree on during a vote that required unanimity to go ahead and change it.

Though the format has not been well received, Perez wants to continue trying it, saying it could benefit a team like Force India , even if he admits there should be changes to Q3 after a lack of available tyres saw teams complete just one run in the final session.

"Sometimes we hear it is definitely changed and then I got a call from my engineer to tell me qualifying isn't changing. Let's give it a go... I want to believe we can create more trouble in the race with this qualifying system. For example if we didn't have the safety car who knows what would have happened.

"We were on a different strategy, we went onto the one stop with different compounds. For me the bad part of qualifying is Q3, when you see the final minutes of Q3 with everything decided because everyone has run out of tyres. Let's see, let' give it another go.

"[Referring to Q3] I think the short-term solution can be a good one and a quick one to fix. Still you have cars arriving in Q3, like Ferrari, that didn't have a great Q2 lap so had to do a second attempt running out of tyres. Q3 should be more open to have the inspiring of the people looking at the last minute on TV." 

Zdroj: crash.net