F1 to keep full knockout qualifying in Bahrain

The much decried elimination-style qualifying will remain for the upcoming Bahrain Grand Prix, despite F1 team bosses initially wanting to revert to the old format.

The new knockout system turned out to be a fiasco in Melbourne’s curtain raiser, especially in the Q3 pole position shootout that saw no action at all in the final minutes of running.

The ensuing outcry led team bosses to vote for an immediate return of the system that had been in place from 2006-15. However, the change had to be unanimously ratified by the F1 commission, a 26-member body comprising members of the teams, Formula One Management [FOM], FIA, grand prix promoters, sponsors, and technical partners.

Over the past few days, several dissenting voices started to surface to say that the new elimination principle should not be ditched altogether but rather tweaked to make it work better. F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone told La Gazzetta dello Sport that he was endorsing a hybrid version of the system, whereby drivers will face time elimination in Q1 and Q2 while Q3 reverts to a more traditional format.

Autosport reports that following a meeting of the F1 commission on Thursday, the decision has been taken to keep the full knockout system in place. Motorsport.com adds that the idea of only modifying Q3 failed to garner unanimous support.

“They're going to do what I proposed, which is leave things as they are for this race,” Ecclestone told Autosport.

“After that we will then have a good look and decide whether what was done was the right thing to do, the wrong thing to do, does it need modifying, does it need scrapping?

“This was an FIA idea in the first place, so I've said to them we'll support whatever they think is the right thing to do.

“But as nobody knows what the right thing to do is, we've said we'll stay where we are and have a look after this race.

“Then two races in we'll see, as it was a prototype, what was right or wrong.

“The teams didn't understand what they were doing either, which didn't help at all.”

Ecclestone initially wanted to implement partially reversed grid with the pole sitter lining up 10^th on the grid while the 10^th fastest in qualifying would have started from the sharpest end of the field.

The toing and froing on qualifying comes amid growing discontent from the drivers, who sent out an open letter on Wednesday to warn that recent decisions taken in the sport “could jeopardise its success”. The statement also described F1's current governance and decision-making as “ill-structured” and “obsolete”.

Technical analysis - Melbourne

Scene at the Australian Grand Prix

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