Ecclestone Hopes for New Qualifying by Mid-Season

Formula One could have a new qualifying format within a matter of weeks, Bernie Ecclestone said on Saturday.

"We'll try and get it through mid-season if we can," the sport's commercial supremo said at the Spanish Grand Prix where Ferrari's Michael Schumacher qualified on pole position for the fourth time in five races.

The US Grand Prix at Indianapolis on June 20 is the midpoint, the ninth of the season's 18 races. Formula One has experimented with various qualifying systems over the years, with a single-lap format introduced for the start of last season.

The two one-hour sessions of 2003 were then shoe-horned into one this year with broadcasters and spectators complaining that qualifying ran for longer than the race and was boring.

All the team bosses backed the idea of changing the qualifying at a meeting in Monaco on Tuesday. Ecclestone suggested a sole Saturday afternoon session lasting for just one hour would be best.

"I'd like to go back to having one hour...split into two half-hours with a minimum of six laps per car to run in each half-hour and aggregate the two times for the grid," he said.

Formula One previously had a single one-hour free-for-all but that too became tedious with little happening for the first half-hour as teams waited for the optimum conditions. Ecclestone said the answer to that was to give each driver six laps to complete per half-hour.

"If you don't do six laps then you take the slowest time from the next session and if you don't do it in both sessions you start from the back of the grid," he said. "So they will run for six laps."