Mark Hughes: F1's Inside Line

Why do we have fuel burn, that phase of qualifying that caused such controversy at McLaren in Hungary? While we're at it, why do we have fuelled-up qualifying at all?

Originally the idea was to divide qualifying into three parts so that there was always track action, and none of the nonsense of an hour-long session where no one went out for the first 20 minutes - hardly great live tv and not riveting viewing for the paying punters trackside either.

The current system solves that by ensuring cars have to go out in Q1 and Q2 in order to make it into the next segment and in the final session, Q3, they have to run because the more laps they do the lighter they can be when they fit their new tyres and go for their final qualifying laps. Afterwards their fuel replenishing credits for each completed lap are applied, enabling them to have a decent-length first race stint.

It solves the problem of no track action nicely, and makes for an interesting strategy conundrum. But it's horribly complicated and unnecessarily so. Try to explain to an interested but non-hardcore viewer why we have a part of the session called fuel-burn-off whereby they put fuel in the tank then burn it off again while not attempting to set a grid time.

Try to explain the idea of a set fuel credit per lap that determines the rate at which you get your fuel paid back afterwards. Try to explain that if you use less than you are credited with it's a good thing. Try to explain why instead of trying to burn off fuel, you don't just not put it in in the first place. Try to explain why it was an advantage for Lewis Hamilton in Hungary to be the car running ahead in the fuel-burn laps.

Try to explain how come he was first at the end of the pitlane. Try to explain why it is usually the two McLaren-Mercedes that are at the end of the pitlane waiting to go out first in the fuel burn - though they were beaten to it in Turkey by Ferrari - and how it is for very specific technical reasons rather than simply being better organised.

Then once you've done all that, try to explain how we don't actually know how the top 10 cars and drivers really compare in speed, because some had a lot more fuel on board than others when they set their times. Then try to get across that actually you can account for this to a reasonable degree of precision to do a weight-corrected set of times, but it involves doing some sums and will have no influence on the actual grid.

Then try to explain that to do this you need the penalty effect of weight for each circuit specifically and that there is a big variation between circuits. Then try to explain that this is further complicated by the specific fuel consumption the cars achieve at each circuit and how that too varies considerably between tracks.

It's an aspect of the sport that's got caught up in its own cleverness and in doing so is alienating viewers. It's left us with a highly intricate procedure that few understand and with a system that doesn't allow us to know who is really fastest on Saturday. We usually get to find that out on Sunday as the cars make their first stops and we discover how much weight they were carrying - but no one is much interested by then. It needs to be of the moment.

Qualifying procedure is not even the biggest problem with the show at the moment either. The lack of overtaking this year has been quite dire. The combination of the very choppy wake of this year's cars with the single-supply tyres has made for the least entertaining set of races for many a season, even though we have a fascinating title battle.

At Monza this weekend we are due to hear the proposals of the overtaking working group, and that will be a step in the right direction. But these will concern technical regulations that may not even come in until 2010. What about the two seasons before then?

Well, it's been said before on these pages, but the time seems right to highlight it again: what about mixing up the grids? Ensuring we've got the faster guys behind the slower ones at the start. It wouldn't be F1 if this were done by artificial means - by adding success ballast for instance.

But why ever could we not devise a system that would give us those sorts of grids. What about reverse order of the previous race's fastest laps? It would give us the odd anomaly - if, say, a frontrunner was an early retirement, he would be well placed on the grid next time and would likely dominate that race. But they would be anomalies.

Most of the time we would have the guys in the quick cars having to race their way through. At tracks such as Monaco or Hungary the difficulty of overtaking would probably mean even the fast guys wouldn't be able to get through to the front by the end of the race - and we'd get the odd shock result. But would that be so bad?

That would then pose the question of what do we do about the Saturday qualifying slot if the grid were to be decided by the previous race? We could still have a contest on Saturday afternoon to see who was fastest.

They could even be awarded points all the way down the list for it. So it would still be an absolutely critical part of the weekend, it just wouldn't have anything to do with the grid. And we'd get to find out who really was quickest over one lap, who was quicker in each team etc. It could be done on the old-fashioned low fuel/new tyres system - and you'd specify a set number of laps to be completed in each 15 minute segment to keep the action coming.

It would mean revising the points system so that the race still carried much more significance than qualifying and it would need a few sporting regs tweaks to ensure teams didn't build separate race and qualifying cars.

But it could be applied immediately and wouldn't need any new technology, so the racing could be livened up even as we waited for the new breed of 'overtaking cars'. And we could be rid of 'fuel burn'.