F1 drivers come out in support of Stefano Domenicali's suggestion of scrapping/reducing Free Practice session during race weekend

Several F1 drivers, like Pierre Gasly, Nyck de Vries and George Russell, have supported CEO Stefano Domenicali's idea of scrapping or reducing free practice sessions during race weekends.

Domenicali recently attended the opening race of the 2023 MotoGP season, where he said that he supported the cancellation of free practice in F1 and explained how it's useful for engineers but boring for fans.

Although many fans and pundits argued against it, drivers did not. Rather, they supported the concept of having only one or two practice sessions, instead of three. During the drivers' press conference, Gasly said:

"From a driver's point of view, you don't need three training sessions. Of course, it's always nice: you can work on details on your car and really try to get the set-up right."

The same question was posed to Nyck de Vries, who has joined the sport this year. Despite being a rookie, he said that one or two practice sessions are enough. He recalled how drivers and teams in junior categories only get one practice session to figure everything out. The Dutchman said:

"Generally speaking, one training session is enough, at most, two training sessions are enough. In all junior classes, you only have to make do with one free practice session. So we could use less practice time."

George Russell also supported the idea and proposed having a single training session to test everything in the car and develop it accordingly. He said:

"I would leave it at a simple training session so that you can work out the set-up and test things. ... I think a training session would be enough for everyone to try out everything and develop it further."

Although several F1 drivers support the reduction of free practices, it's safe to say that teams will go against the idea simply because they get a lot of information about the car, which helps in developing upgrades, during free practice.

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Legendary F1 car designer Adrian Newey could move to Mercedes, says Adrian Newey

Damon Hill, a former F1 champion, speculated that Red Bull's chief technical officer, Adrian Newey, might move to Mercedes. Newey's contract with Red Bull ends after the 2023 season, and there are chances that he could jump ship.

Hill recalled Newey intently observing Mercedes' W14 at the Bahrain GP. He said:

"I can't help ignoring this thing he did in Bahrain, where he stood in front of Mercedes on the grid with his clipboard and stood there for a long time looking at their front wings.

"Anybody who knows Adrian will know 'wait a minute, he has only got the most dominant car in Formula 1; why is he looking at Mercedes' front wing?' Was he really looking at the front wings, or was he just standing in front of the Mercedes saying 'I'm interested', is that what he was really saying?"

Newey has been with Red Bull for a long time and has won five championship titles with them. Even before joining the Austrian-British team, he has created race and championship winning cars for Williams and McLaren and is considered one of the best car designers and technical officers in F1.