These were the news for the Imola GP qualifying session, although the rain has postponed its premiere.
This weekend, at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Formula 1 will introduce a series of changes to qualifying to ensure greater equality and reduce the number of tires available. The new rules affect the games that each team will have in each of the parts of the session that decides the order on the grid for Sunday’s race.
The long-awaited Imola Grand Prix, where the teams will begin to bring their most important updates, will also have news in the format section. It will not be because there is a sprint race, since to see another edition of this type of race we will have to wait until Austria. In this case, what is put to the test is a change in the rules for the use of tires.
As has been done in recent years, the qualifying session will continue to be divided into three parts, Q1 (18 minutes), Q2 (15 minutes) and Q3 (12 minutes). The change comes in the tires that each car can fit at any time. Until now, this was totally free, each driver could start with the compound that he wanted, although the normal thing was to do it with the fastest since Q1, in the event that the driver in question risked the pass to the next round.
At Imola this will change, and now the compound to be used in each part of qualifying will be mandatory. In Q1, the 20 single-seaters will have to equip the hard tyres, in Q2 they will equip the medium ones and in Q3, the soft ones. In this way, everyone will have to play with the same cards and conditions.
This decision allows Pirelli to reduce the number of tires available during the weekend from 13 to 11, which at the same time reduces the environmental impact of producing and transporting the tires to each circuit.
This allocation includes three sets of hard rubber, four of the medium and four of the soft compound. The number of available wet units does not change: four sets for the intermediate and three for the extreme rain.
Each driver will have a total of seven sets available for the race, which must include at least one of the mandatory compounds: hard and medium. Among the remaining four, one must be returned after Free Practice 1, one more after Free Practice 2 and two after Free Practice 3.
In addition, Formula 1 debuts this weekend a new extreme rain tire, the first from Pirelli that does not require heaters and that must not be preheated for two hours at 40 degrees. Most likely, we will see him on track at various times over the weekend, as rain is expected during the Imola Grand Prix.
