Sebastian Vettel Hits Out At Aggregate Qualifying Proposal

 

Sebastian Vettel has given short shrift to the new proposed aggregate qualifying system, labelling the idea s***. F1 team bosses met with Bernie Ecclestone and Jean Todt on Sunday in Bahrain to discuss what to do about the qualifying format after a fresh wave of criticism for the little-loved elimination rules, which were used for the second time on Saturday.

Although no agreement on what to do for the next race China was reached, a new idea was put forward for aggregate qualifying whereby a driver's two best times in each of the three knockout sessions are combined to set the order. Teams will vote on the proposal on Thursday. Ferrari's Vettel is already not a fan, he said “It's time to go to the circus. It's a good idea if you want random things to happen, but Formula 1 should be about racing. It's a s*** idea”.

Although the controversial 90-second eliminations of the current regulations would be dropped, a system of aggregate times would mean that drivers with the outright fastest laps in each session might not be at the head of the timesheet.  Although teams had agreed unanimously in Australia to go back in full to the 2015 knockout format, such a plan wasn't made available to vote on by the FIA, with Red Bull and McLaren then not agreeing to a hybrid version whereby only Q3 reverted to last year's rules.