The lost importance of Qualifying in F1

Qualifying is a very important part of the whole F1 weekend. The concept of qualifying is to ensure that the fastest car gets an advantage in terms of grid position. But that concept is changing even as we speak. In fact, some of us may argue that the concept has already changed.

In the last decade, qualifying was a big deal for all the teams. It was the thing that could decide whether you ended up on the podium with a bottle of champagne in your hands or whether you just ended up on the race classification sheet with nothing to show against your name. During those years, stable tires and no fancy tricks like DRS also made the race hard for the drivers. There was not much overtaking and more often that not you finished in the position in which you had qualified. If you qualified lower than 6th, usually you were doomed with no chance of even a sniff at victory.

But the new decade has brought about its fair share of changes. Most important of which are the Pirelli tires, Drag Reduction System (or DRS) and Kinetic Energy Recovery System (or KERS). Now, thanks to these, we see a lot more overtaking than we used to see in the past. But these, in turn, have also taken their toll on qualifying. Gone are the days when qualifying was all important. Nowadays, even if you qualify 10th, you may have a chance of getting to the podium provided you get your strategy right. Also, the high degradation rate of the Pirelli tires has actually made a mockery of the system of qualifying.

According to the current qualifying format, the top 10 qualifiers have to start the race on the same tire that they qualified on. That gives them a straight disadvantage against the other qualifiers who get to choose the tires that they will start on. We have already seen examples of teams not running their cars in Q3 so that they may chose their starting tires on race day. Also, certain cars, though being very quick in qualifying, are very slow in race pace and vice versa. The best examples of this would be the last race in Bahrain. Although Rosberg, in the Mercedes GP car, had a very quick car in qualifying and took pole position, he could only finish the race in 9th, which is a sharp contrast with the two Lotus cars. Kimi Raikkonen qualified in 9th and his team mate Romain Grosjean qualified even lower in 11th. But after the race was run on Sunday, both were on the podium.

In this new era, qualifying is not as important as it used to be previously. Now, thanks to devices like KERS and DRS, overtaking is not an oddity while the Pirelli tires have spiced up racing and brought in an element of strategy to the table. To end this discussion, here is what Mark Webber had to say about the whole thing. “Qualifying has become less and less important over the years,” he said. “Back in the day, it was everything really – it was 75-80% of where you come around on the first lap. There are still some chess games to play on Saturday to make sure you are in a good position.”