Just when thought F1 news couldn’t get any more ridiculous, elimination qualifying (yes, the one that so awful it was scrapped after one race) is back on for Bahrain!
‘So I read this yesterday, it’s going to be tweaked right?’ NO! It’s changed AGAIN! We’re talking about the same elimination qualifying for Q3.
You know the one where everyone got out their cars with five minutes left of the session… the one where all the fans left the circuit before qualifying had even finished… the one where the team principals got angry and all agreed on reverting back to the old qualifying format for Bahrain. Yeah, that one.
Oh you’re going to love this folks! New knockout qualifying to remain unaltered for Bahrain, with a further review to follow that race.
— Ian Parkes (@ianparkesf1) March 24, 2016
Bernie Ecclestone confirmed to Autosport that the new qualifying format will go ahead in Bahrain as it did in Melbourne, with Q1, Q2 and Q3 all getting the 90 second elimination treatment.
“They’re going to do what I proposed, which is leave things as they are for this race,” said Ecclestone. “After that we will then have a good look and decide whether what was done was the right thing to do, the wrong thing to do, does it need modifying, does it need scrapping?”
“This was an FIA idea in the first place, so I’ve said to them we’ll support whatever they think is the right thing to do.”
Wait, let me just check online because it’s probably changed again since writing this…
…Nope, apparently it’s happening. Well there’s still over a week to go until the race so there’s still time to keep faffing about with it.
I’m laughing about it to stop myself from crying.