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Mosley Calls for Qualifying Decision

FIA president Max Mosley pleaded on Friday for the team bosses to club together and provide a solution for changes to the qualifying sessions or face another season of bickering over how to get rid of the single-lap format.

FIA president Max Mosley pleaded on Friday for the team bosses to club together and provide a solution for changes to the qualifying sessions or face another season of bickering over how to get rid of the single-lap format.

The current format, which consists of two single lap sessions, has proved unpopular with fans and teams ever since it was introduced at the start of last season amongst a raft of changes aimed at spicing up the sport.

Formula One commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone tried to push through a new format for this year's British Grand Prix in July after discussions amongst the teams failed to find a solution.

But that was blocked and Mosley said here Friday: "At the moment there is no agreement on a new proposal for qualifying so if nothing changes it will simply go on next year exactly as it is now.

"We can never get the teams to agree, but maybe we will. The deadline is October 31. If we can get the Formula One commission to agree before then it can go through. Nothing can change unless we have a majority of 18 votes at least in the Formula One Commission and once we get past October 31 we need unanimous agreement to change. That is near impossible."

F1 Racing magazine started a 'Fax Max' campaign - aimed at getting fans to send to the FIA, by fax or e-mail, their support for a complex qualifying system. But Mosley said the gimic has failed to develop much interest.

The magazine's suggestion, based on an idea by Jaguar boss Tony Purnell, was to have mini races before the main Grand Prix, but Mosley said that while he likes the idea it would fail on two fronts.

"The teams would find it very stressful for one," said Mosley. "And secondly, the start of the race is probably the most dangerous moment and what you are doing is multiplying the dangerous moments so there could be a safety issue.

"There hasn't been enormous support, not overwhelming support for it, I think that's fair to say - unless, of course, the magazine in question has failed to send on the faxes or our fax machine has not been working."

Ecclestone's idea was for two 20-minute sessions to be run within an hour-long qualifying period, with all the drivers out on track at the same time and an aggregate time between first and second sessions deciding the grid.

Most suggestions revolve around the scrapping of the single-lap qualifying sessions and a return to having all cars out on track at once as had happened for years in the past.

But Mosley believes single-lap running has its merits and said: "I recognise that when you are at the circuit what we have now is quite boring. But when you watch on television it has certain attractions.

"As you can only watch one car at a time it's not as frustrating as in the old days. The frustrating thing about the previous qualifying was that you always missed the lap you wanted to see. Very often they would show you someone on a slowing down lap when you knew, if you had access to the times, that someone was on a really quick lap. It was very frustrating."

But Mosley believes the best way to find a solution is to involve the television-watching public in a telephone vote to choose the best of a number of solutions to implement for 2005.

"I have repeatedly said in the meetings of the Formula One commission and to the team principals that if you have a multi-billion dollar business anybody else asks the customers what they want," said Mosley.

"Who are the customers? They are not the teams, they are not the people at the circuit even, they are the hundreds of millions of people watching it on television.

"Why can't we ask the television companies to do one of those things where they ask various options and they get a little bit of money from each phone call? They're very happy to do it, everyone is happy and we might learn something.

"But nobody takes any notice."

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