The saga of formula 1 racing has been debated for a long, long time and it has developed from the favorite of cocktail party circuits to intellectual discussions and more to emerge today as the nail-biting wonder of a phenomenon such as qualifying actually being measurable. If you too are one of the millions of Formula 1 racing circuit followers and love to follow the racing cars on Telly, even your iPhone or watch podcasts and subscribe to racing magazines focusing on winners, winning streaks and super sexy fast cars that lucked out even with their billion dollar machinery, then this article is just right for you!
Recent reports reveal that it took 5 seasons of F1 to find a winning formula for the qualifying rounds of the hour long session where all participating cars ran at the same time, requiring the stud or fastest driver to take a pole position; the next in line to the fastest driver would be granted second position and so on.
However, Formula 1 enthusiasts will appreciate here that in this one hour F1 qualifying session, the lap times and tires were all taken into consideration and so, those drivers with the fastest cars (for example Schumacher with his Italian supermodel of a car, the Ferrari, could not appear on the track till the fag end of the time limit, if he were to gain the top rank. So, this last minute wait to get on the track took away much of the spectacular draw of what F1 racing would otherwise have aspired to be.
Then came the 2002 ruling by the IAF (International Automobile Federation), which stated that drivers would go from one shoot-out round to another one in order to turn the F1 racing session from an hour long lap time one to a double session of 2 hours per each single lap shoot-out. This decision made by the leading car racing sport’s ruling body enabled the qualifying system to get established as the double 2 hour shootout single lap time that required every single racing car driver to run one single timed lap alone. Soon it was brought down to one hour – in a bid to make the F1 racing more exciting; but with even the strongest drivers making horrible mistakes, this aspiration of the rule-making authorities too was dashed unceremoniously to the ground.
It was only in the year 2006 that Formula 1 was able to come up with a complex but thrilling system to ensure the excitement of professional super-fast racing car circuit was maintained for onlookers: but this still had one flaw – that of 10 minutes of the last session spent in cars only doing turn laps to burn gas. Of course, this last minute fuel burning exercise was only followed till the time that the real contest would actually begin (at the fag end of the session), but in 2008, this flaw was recognized and rectified to changing over the last session to comprise only 10 minutes.
Now, that makes current F1 racing begin on Saturday afternoon at 2 o’clock, with teams having an hour-long qualifying session that is separated into 3 parts. In the first part, called Q1, comprising 20 minutes, all racing cars get on the track together and aim at setting their fastest time. Thereafter, the slowest among these are eliminated (those earning grid positions ranks of 16 to 20). The next round, Q2 lasts from 2:27 to 2:42 and involves qualifying 15 cars to go in for another round on the tacks as their previous lap times stand cancelled; further eliminations take place here with the 5 slowest cars placed at grid positions of 11 to 15 eliminated. In the last division, called Q3, the time duration lasts 2:50 to 3:00 in the afternoon and comprises of last 10 cars fighting for the top position (pole position), which is also referred to as the No. 1 grid spot.
At this stage, should a racing car stop, break down or get pushed into the pit lane by the track marshals or other team members, neither the driver nor the car may go to the qualifying session.