Force India against Formula 1 returning to old qualifying system

Force India has revealed it did not want to vote in favour of Formula 1 reintroducing its previous qualifying format following the controversial changes made for the Australian Grand Prix

F1 was heavily criticised for the new qualifying system, where drivers were eliminated at 90-second intervals in the closing minutes of each segment, but the track action was largely limited to the early minutes of each part.

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Teams agreed to vote in favour of going back to the 2006-15 system as soon as possible ahead of the grand prix, which Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley believes was unnecessary.

"Part of the reason the qualifying [change] was done was the race," he said.

"How can you make that decision if you have not even done the race?

"We didn't vote for it [to be changed back].

"I asked for it to be noted that we were strictly against it on principle and time should be given for it.

"I hope that more people will take our position with a bit of time to think about it.

"The tyres, the qualifying, everything had an impact on this race. Maybe we should wait a little bit more.

"It was too knee-jerk a reaction and I think some very interesting things came out of it."

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Fernley said Force India would not stand in the way of changing qualifying back at all costs.

"Force India is not going to do something that is detrimental to Formula 1," he said.

"It will fight like hell for fatigues in the system but it won't do something detrimental if it is in the best interest and everybody feels that way.

"We were not necessarily against [making a change] but making a decision without time to reflect on what had gone on."

He also believes the debate over qualifying should not be too focused on how the decisive Q3 pole position shootout played out, with no cars on track in the final couple of minutes.

"When was the last time you saw the amount of action we had in Q1 or Q2?" he said.

"Why do we need to focus on Q3; why throw out Q1?

"Q2 was almost better so why not tweak it a little bit more.

"I have never seen a situation where we have been running the super-soft tyres absolutely flat-out qualifying and lots of mistakes happening and it was a real pressure cooker situation.

"Why can't we take the positives and then correct the weaknesses then look at it again?"