Time to bring back qualifying tyres

Later this month, Formula 1 teams will meet to discuss changes to the qualifying regulations. The objective: to reduce the risk of drivers reaching the Q3 top-10 shootout and not making a serious final qualifying attempt in order to save tyres.

Quite why this is taking place a matter of weeks before the season is puzzling and another example of F1 failing to get its collective house in order and tackle problems before they loom too large to resolve. But, as the tyre shenanigans in Q3 is an area that has come under fire from fans, it's a case of better late than never.

Fundamentally, the structure of qualifying is a good one. The three-segment strategy maintains interest throughout and if the backmarker teams can haul themselves onto level terms with the back of the midfield the opening 20-minute sessions could be spectacular this year.

There are those who advocate a return to the old ways, a single one-hour session, or two sessions - one each on Friday or Saturday. But once qualifying became a mainstream television event in the 1990s, the criticism that this led to lengthy spells of empty track and the occasional risk of a meaningless wet Saturday became overwhelming. The knockout format is an effective compromise and has become popular in many categories of motorsport.

But there are real problems with the detail, namely the tendency to save tyres. While most viewers aren't that interested in seeing the ninth or 10th fastest car lapping in the short, sharp, Q3 session, it seems perverse to fight your way through to a top-10 shootout, then give up. This is currently the biggest weakness of qualifying.

1991 was the last year with qualifying tyres © LAT

The most compelling of the proposals is to adopt qualifying tyres. The key is to ensure that Q3 activities are effectively ringfenced in terms of how they impinge on a driver's tyre allocation.

As it stands, each driver will be given 12 sets of tyres for the race weekend. This is divided into seven sets of the harder (prime) compound and five of the softer (option) one.

The tyres are given up at various stages after free practice sessions, leaving six sets of tyres, three of each compound, for qualifying and the race.

Currently, drivers reaching Q3 must start the race on the set of tyres with which they set their best lap. This is a legacy of 2010, when the rule was adopted to replace the variable lost when refuelling was banned and drivers again qualified on a light load.

This is where the problems come in. There have been plenty of times when drivers have either burned up their rapid option rubber getting through Q1 and Q2 and have nothing left, or want to save a fresh set of tyres for extra range in a race stint, so do not mount a serious qualifying attempt.

As drivers attempting to set a qualifying time by starting a flying lap would then be classified ahead of those who failed to start one, who would themselves be placed on the grid ahead of anyone who failed to leave the pits, this led to various different states of trundling around rather than seriously making a qualifying attempt.

Allocating qualifying rubber will prevent this. You will have a set or two of tyres to use in Q3 and be unable to carry it through to the race, so there is no downside to burning them up.

It would eliminate the tyre-choice variable, with drivers sacrificing qualifying pace to start on a more durable compound, but there are only a handful of occasions when that has seriously influenced the battle at the front.

There would still be the option to start on whichever compound you prefer once you have used your qualifying tyres, so there remains the scope for alternative strategies. It does reduce the scope for those around the sixth or seventh rows to climb past the lower Q3 runners in races thanks to a tyre-range advantage, but the top-10 shootout dodgers are heading that possibility off anyway.

Drivers sitting out Q3 has become quite common © LAT

There are some downsides. Clearly, it would cost money. Ideally, drivers reaching Q3 should be able to attempt two out-flier-in runs, so Pirelli would need to have a total of 44 sets of tyres, four for each team, mounted and ready to go. This is not ideal either from an economic or environmental point of view, and will lead to even more unused tyres going to waste after an F1 weekend than already do.

The question is, who would shoulder that cost burden? Pirelli has been pitching the idea of qualifying tyres ever since it returned to F1 at the start of 2011. Inevitably, Pirelli will believe that the teams should pay for this and the teams will think it should be Pirelli. That's another reason why this situation should have been tackled earlier.

But the time for that has passed and the best solution is arguably for both sides to share some of the costs. The teams in particular have preached the need to listen to the fans and improve the show (although they have remained largely mute or equivocal about the double-points plan that, collectively, they did have the power to prevent) so this is a chance to put their money where their mouth is.

As for the character of the qualifying tyres, that is open. Ideally, they would be something like the super-sticky, one-lap wonders of old. Not since the 1991 Australian Grand Prix has pole been claimed using bespoke qualifying rubber, appropriately enough by Ayrton Senna, and the idea has great appeal.

It's likely too late to achieve dramatically grippier tyres without fundamentally changing the way they behave (which will not be desirable with the parc ferme restrictions on set-up changes) so perhaps the short-term fix is simply to use the existing super-soft rubber. But in the long term, it could become a genuine qualifying special.

"We know the public likes the idea of a qualifying tyre and drivers rather like the thrill of having a qualifying tyre and chasing that ultimate lap," Pirelli Motorsport boss Paul Hembery told AUTOSPORT in 2011, when we first wrote about the idea.

"It's a one-shot, zero-mistake tyre so it builds up the tension. It would be an extreme, one-hit tyre, two seconds a lap quicker."

The idea has not gone significantly further. But it should, even if there are a few obstacles to be worked around.

Qualifying should have that on-the-edge, balls-out quality. It would be wrong to say that F1 has lost this in recent years, because it hasn't, but this is one area of the show that can clearly be improved.