Grapevine: Sunday Qualifying to be Dropped

Autosport-Atlas understands that negotiations are underway to get rid of the Sunday morning session altogether and revert qualifying to just a single one-hour session on Saturday afternoon.

Although previous discussions aimed at changing the current format - which has been criticised by fans, television companies and team bosses - have failed to reach the required unanimity amongst teams, sources claim that momentum for change has gathered since teams gathered in Monaco for this weekend's race.

The fact that Sunday morning qualifying has been ignored by most television companies and has devalued the interest in Saturday's session, has led to the impetus for the change.

The proposal under discussion is for Saturday's session to switch from being run with low fuel, as is current, to being run with race fuel - as teams did last year.

Previous attempts to move qualifying away from being run with race levels of fuel were blocked with some teams believing it would hand an advantage to those teams with larger fuel tanks.

The key to getting qualifying changed will be Ferrari, who have so far proved reluctant to agree to change but may feel that support for the move would now be prudent.