How should F1 shake up its race format?

Formula 1 constantly grapples with an incessant drive to innovate that often risks offending the history and tradition that underpins its appeal. I guess this is why proposals to shake up the long-established format of grand prix weekends have received a mixed reception in the F1 paddock.

On the one hand, we have traditionalists, such as four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel. We know he's 'old school' and a bit of a historian; countless times he's shown his penchant for F1's record books, and his feelings about the sound made by F1's current small-capacity hybrid turbo engines are also well known. Vettel doesn't want F1 to do anything that would detract from the splendour and grandeur of Sunday's racing.

On the other hand, there are those, such as double world champion Lewis Hamilton, who says he "couldn't take" another seven years doing exactly the same thing he's been doing for the past eight and a half: practice, qualify, race, repeat, like a sort of high-speed, adrenaline-fuelled Groundhog Day...

There are several ways of shaking up a grand prix weekend, should F1's power brokers summon the necessary will, though Jenson Button (who may know something the rest of us don't) certainly thinks they won't.

As early as March's Malaysian Grand Prix, there were discussions about introducing a second race onto the F1 weekend schedule. Force India's Bob Fernley suggested adopting a Wimbledon-style tennis format of separate ladies and gentlemen's championships, hosting a race for female drivers on the Saturday, followed by the men's GP on the Sunday, with qualifying for both events (using the same cars) held on Friday.

While F1 has changed considerably, grand prix formats have stayed largely the same © LAT

In terms of spectacle, there is nothing really wrong with this notion. Two hits of qualifying on a Friday would be far more interesting than watching the teams test for three hours, like they do presently, and a special competition for women drivers might increase appeal and participation among a section of the population that is grossly under-represented in F1.

However, it goes against the fundamental non-gender-biased nature of motor racing from a competition point of view. Men and women compete equally in motorsport (at least in theory), so why should a sport that has not discriminated from a physiological perspective until now suddenly start doing so?

If you don't like that idea, you could take the same basic format and apply it to young/test/reserve/development (delete as appropriate) drivers, though the proposal currently under consideration is slightly different and involves teams fielding a third car on Saturdays for a junior-driver race, from which the most successful participants would contest the GP proper.

Beyond the cost of adding a third car per team for each weekend, I worry this format would appear strange to the casual viewer. Why only one car per team on Saturdays? Why these extra drivers on Sunday? What are the criteria to be one of these drivers? Will they be eligible for championship points?

Too many questions. At least the gender divide (though controversial) makes sense in the context of other sports.

Third drivers such as Jolyon Palmer would relish action beyond Fridays © LAT

I have previously advocated adopting the format used in karting, whereby drivers race for their grid positions for the main event via a series of short heat races, for which grid positions are awarded randomly but equitably for each entry. This would mean much more racing and far less 'testing' during a GP weekend, and provide a link to the lower levels of motor racing, but as one top TV bod explained to me in Austria, this format would be a nightmare for mainstream TV scheduling, and thus a non-starter.

Any change basically has to recycle the existing available track time on offer, for logistical and cost reasons, so the most pragmatic solution for introducing a Saturday race in F1 would be a simple qualifying event, like those seen at the Macau Formula 3 Grand Prix each November.

Any other sprint-race format - using reversed grids and awarding half points, for example - risks devaluing the main event (by probably being more exciting than the GP itself!), affecting the outcome of the world championship, and thus making Vettel quite angry...

I suppose the simplest way would be to have FP1 and qualifying on Friday, a warm-up in place of FP3, a short qualifying race on Saturday, and then the GP on Sunday; or hold FP1 and FP2 as now, then have qualifying on Saturday morning and the qualifying race on Saturday afternoon. I'd prefer the former, if only because it would make grand prix Fridays less monotonous.

In either case we would get some extra unpredictability, without undermining F1's meritocracy, and the emphasis of the whole weekend would shift in favour of racing over testing, which is currently not the case given more hours are devoted to practice than anything else.

Taking cues from the Macau Grand Prix format is worth considering © LAT

Personally, I would prefer to see the cars racing more often, but I appreciate (and agree with) the need to protect the main event and the tradition of the world championship. I think it's possible with small tweaks, but there has to be a common will to do so.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has suggested (re)introducing a separate single-make race for past and present drivers, in the tradition of the BMW M1 Procar championship that supported F1 from 1979-80. It's certainly not the worst idea, and another prominent paddock personality is keen to see something similar using GP2 cars, in order to - as he puts it - find out once and for all who is the best driver on the grid.

But if you do this with single-seaters you again drift towards the dangerous territory of eclipsing the appeal of the main event, which is about man and (bespoke) machine doing battle together.

Personally, I think F1 should change its format. Everything needs a refresh once in a while, and the current three-stage qualifying format (introduced in 2006) is proof that change can work well.

Any further alterations need to be very carefully thought through. As ever, F1 has a tricky balance to strike between the sport, the show, the business, the fans and its heritage.

Perhaps that will ultimately lead to the inertia Button predicts, but there is no doubt in my mind that F1's weekend format could be more exciting than it is right now.

The track time is already there; it just needs to be used in a better way.