Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRegulations

Reverse grids would lead to overtaking work

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Reverse grids would lead to teams developing their cars to be better at overtaking, according to Pat Symonds.

Bernie Ecclestone has been keen to change the qualifying format in order to lead to more unpredictability in races following a run of 39 pole positions and 35 wins from 41 races for Mercedes. With one suggesting being reverse grids, Williams chief technical officer Symonds believes such change would force teams to adapt car designs to make overtaking easier.

"It would [help], what you need is an incentive," Symonds told Sky Sports. "The incentive we have in all motorsport is try and put our car on pole and lead every lap of the race. That's what your design aim is. So you don't worry too much about running in turbulent air.

"Now, if you turn things round a little bit, and say 'no matter how good your car is, it's going to be running in turbulent air because we're going to put it in the middle of the grid', you might then say 'actually the best racing car I can make that will ultimately be the most successful over a season is one that is quick in nice clean air, but also works well in turbulent air'."

Despite his optimism, Symonds acknowledges such a change could also lead to teams trying to disturb the air for the following car even further.

"Unfortunately, being racing people, we'd also probably work on trying to destroy the aerodynamics of the car behind us!"

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.