Todt cool over push to drop Friday practice

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FIA president Jean Todt has said that he's not in favour of limiting Grand Prix weekends to just two days in future, after suggestions that new owners Liberty Media should scrap Friday practice altogether.

The suggestion to end the Friday sessions received strong support from Renault Sport boss Cyril Abiteboul during the week, who made no secret that in his view "the current format of the race weekend has to change" and adding that "Friday practice does not play any role."

'Scrap Friday practice!' says Renault's Abiteboul

But while insisting that he was open to improvements and changes to the sport, Todt said that a complete overhaul is not necessary and that he was opposed to loving Friday's track sessions.

"It is quite simple, we have not found anything that would be better than the current format," Todt told Speed Week.

"If we were to find something that we believe would be real progress, we would look at it very closely," he added.

Liberty has been urged to 'spice up' race weekends with a more glamorous and exciting US-style approach to the build-up and fan interaction.

Friday practice has been criticised by drivers as being boring to watch, with Fernando Alonso commenting last November that "We should pay the people who are in the grandstands to watch the cars passing.

"Fans want to see fast cars, something where you cannot close your mouth after you see the car passing. I was 30 minutes today outside the circuit and I was sleeping," he said at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

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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.