Why F1's Imola experiment won't become a permanent fixture

"These compact race weekends, we like this challenge of getting everything sorted in only one session before you're heading into qualifying. And in the end, I think if it helps to save running costs for us teams, if it helps to reduce the number of days being away from home for our guys in the team and if it works out with F1, obviously with all their contracts, it's definitely something we would support a lot."

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl was one of the many paddock figures asked for their verdict on Formula 1's trial of a two-day format for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola last weekend. Without the luxury of two sessions on Friday, teams had their work cut out to condense their run plans to a single 90-minute session before qualifying, in which they had to conduct a proper assessment of tyre wear on the three tyre options, as well as finding a good set-up for qualifying.

Of course, the format had already been forced upon teams at last month's Eifel GP due to heavy rain and fog forcing the cancellation of the normal Friday practices, but this was the first time it had been implemented by design.

So, was it a success? Could this approach provide teams with a good way to save money, within the projected cost cap? Does it present the bigger teams such as Mercedes and Ferrari with the opportunity to use their well-established simulation tools to better effect, thereby exploiting an unfair advantage?

For one thing, as at the Nurburgring, it didn't result in a mix of the order as the Mercedes pair and Max Verstappen again proved the class of the field. But that's not necessarily a black mark against it.

While Seidl conceded on Friday there wasn't much that could be learned from their experience at the Nurburgring, teams were better prepared for what awaited them at Imola simply by virtue that they had known about the format for months in advance, rather than having to hastily rewrite its plans on the fly as in Germany.

As Williams' head of vehicle performance Dave Robson put it: "This weekend we knew that it was going to be short and so we kind of prepared for that. We've known this was going to be the 90-minute session and three sets of tyres, so we planned accordingly."

One of the key differences involved with losing Friday's running is that teams don't have all evening at the factory to run multiple simulator loops and come back to the track on Saturday with greatly improved understanding

Teams normally divide up their run plans between their two drivers, so it is important that both cars run reliably to give a fair comparison, but even more so when there is only one session. Instead of the usual hour-long FP3, Saturday morning practice at Imola was extended to 90 minutes and presented interesting differences between teams. As most looked to get their qualifying simulation runs completed early before switching to race runs, McLaren and AlphaTauri did the opposite.

Of course, one of the key differences involved with losing Friday's running is that teams don't have all evening at the factory to run multiple simulator loops and come back to the track on Saturday with greatly improved understanding. That put a premium on teams rolling out of the garage with a good baseline package to work from and taking a pragmatic approach of prioritising certain areas to change - rather than lots of small tweaks that there wasn't time to verify.

"As a team, we approach this race weekend with a two-day format a bit different in terms of mindset," said Seidl on Friday. "It's very important to be on top of your game from the first run onwards, it's also important not to face any reliability issues, to have a clean session and then hopefully we are on top of our game and are ready for qualifying."

As Robson explained, the biggest difference was a total lack of any new test items to perform future R&D work on, as teams instead devoted their efforts to qualifying and race preparation. Inevitably though, he said Williams did "miss out on some of the refinement that we would otherwise have been doing in a P3 session" after a full Friday.

It certainly didn't help matters that Nicholas Latifi also suffered a brake-by-wire failure so only completed 29 laps - one of only four drivers going into qualifying with fewer than 40 laps under his belt - which meant the team couldn't complete all of its planned cross-car work.

"[The format] affects all the teams, almost equally, so I think if that's what the sport wanted to do, I don't think it'd be a big problem," said Robson. "I think we would soon learn to adapt and still make the most of it, so I think it's sustainable if that's the way we want to go."

AlphaTauri had spent some time at Imola by using a filming day there pre-season, and while Pierre Gasly reported that it hadn't given the team an advantage, both cars looked very much at home - perhaps because, after all they were only 15km from the team's Faenza factory.

Gasly equalled his best-ever qualifying position in fourth, and even challenged Lewis Hamilton on the run to the first corner before an unfortunate mechanical problem put paid to him scoring good points. Team-mate Daniil Kvyat though was at his most racy and provided a lot of excitement with his progress through the mid-pack on softs after the safety car restart, scoring a fourth place finish that will boost the team's hopes of beating Ferrari for sixth in the constructors' championship.

PLUS: Why Italy's minnow F1 team could become its new maestro

Unfortunately, Kvyat was one of the only drivers able to make much of an impression in a race that, as many of the drivers feared, featured little by way of overtaking. Aside from Carlos Sainz Jr passing his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris, the brief excitement as the long-running Kevin Magnussen was eaten up by the leading midfield runners on fresher rubber and Verstappen making the most of a hobbled Valtteri Bottas messing up the first Rivazza and running into the gravel, there wasn't too much on-track action to shout about.

The track at Imola is much narrower than Portimao, and while the pit straight is now longer than it was when F1 last visited in 2006, it appeared that the DRS zone for once wasn't powerful enough and perhaps should have been closer to the exit of the second Rivazza.

But is a circuit that patently wasn't designed to facilitate good racing with these current generation F1 cars a fair representation of the difference resulting from losing Friday's running? It could reasonably be expected that the lack of refinement in some teams' preparation might have been shown up more considerably at a circuit where overtaking was easier to come by, rather than one where cars got stuck in a queue wearing their tyres out if within 1.5s of the car in front.

So, do we think that this should be the normal format at every F1 race? Well, it depends on who we want to please the most. Engineers are wired to have a predisposed loathing of leaving performance on the table and will push for perfection wherever possible. As Robson conceded, "it's probably not personally what I would like to do because I'd like the test day as it is on Friday".

One team that wasn't impressed with the two-day meeting was Racing Point, which might have come away with a podium had it not pitted Sergio Perez during the safety car period, costing him track position he had little hope of regaining. Arguably the lack of Friday running wouldn't have changed the team's strategic call in the heat of the moment, but its strategists would have been much better informed in their decision.

There are many other factors at play that F1 must consider before committing to making two-day events the norm, rather than an exception

"We do use the Friday session to our advantage," said Racing Point technical director Andrew Green. "The learning from the tyres is something that we spend a lot of time preparing for on the Friday, getting the data that is required on the Friday in order to analyse it on the Friday night to be able to come out on Saturday with the best possible package, so we did miss that."

But even if the cost-saving and reduced workload for the teams is a point in favour, it's not just teams that have to be considered - such as the fans and circuits owners too.

For many fans, Fridays offer the only realistic chance to attend a Grand Prix due to the often prohibitive ticket pricing over a weekend. Likewise, circuits that have not been allowed to admit spectators due to the pandemic stand to lose a day of income. Sure, they are being compensated at the moment, but there are also hospitality companies and many other industry stakeholders that would lose out too, including the famous Paddock Club, if a permanent switch were made.

TV companies and sponsors also don't get as much value for their rights agreements, and nor do the fans who pay for subscriptions - even if the calendar does expand back to 23 races next year, giving diehards their fix almost every other weekend.

In short, there are many other factors at play that F1 must consider before committing to making two-day events the norm, rather than an exception.

"I didn't feel as though it was a positive change, it didn't seem to bring anything to the show apart from just making everything shorter," added Green. "I'm not sure that when we get back to a post-COVID Grand Prix whether that's going to work with two-day weekends with accessing the fans and putting on a show."

So, come on Liberty Media, let's not spoil the party. It's been a worthy experiment, but keep the three-day formula, give the fans more of what they want and hopefully, when this pandemic is under control, we can get back to the status quo!