⏱️ F1'25: Four corners

🌟 Editor's Note

I made a poll on Threads about this, and the majority of 57 votes said to keep it as is. So here’s 1,000 words of potential ragebait.

🗓️ What’s coming up…

Formula 1 qualifying for many is the pinnacle of the sport. The cars are at their lightest for fuel, the tyres at their softest, the drivers going all out for a few miles to try and set the grid.

The Saturday spectacle has gained increasing importance at more and more tracks given the size of the cars and the difficulty in overtaking at some circuits. And to the sport’s credit, there’s a wonderful narrative about Saturday.

20 drivers take to the track all at the same time and have 18 minutes to set a lap that gets them into the top 15. It means in Q1 at some places, there can’t be more than 3-4 seconds between cars in the best possible situation. After a short break, the remaining 15 get 15 minutes to get into the top 10. That top 10 get 12 minutes to chase pole position. The whole hour builds as the grid gets set, storylines get written while there’s still on track action and crucially, broadcasters can go to ad breaks without anyone missing out on the session. 

This is a far cry from what I remember as a child, with the predominant format being 60 minutes, fastest times set the grid. Drivers get 12 laps each to do it. It often meant that no one would go out in the first 25 minutes or so, except for the Minardis who would benefit from their sponsors getting some crucial exposure. What I thought was the standard for ages only came into force in 1996, with a two-day session being before that.

The one-hour session was boring for the most part, but it was pure. From 2003, F1 got screwy and looked at one-shot qualifying (the preferred way to set a time on a video game) before settling on the elimination format around the mid-00s (what do you mean that was 20 years ago?!) and after an elimination experiment in 2016 that is best described as woeful, we’ve got this near-perfect format.

One format that did not make that short look back at the past was pre-qualifying. With too many cars to fit on the grid, the worst ones didn’t even get to qualify. Imagine that happening today, and if you were a fan of a team and they didn’t even get to the main event!

There are other qualifying formats. Formula E has its duel, where after the two halves of the grid have set times, the top eight battle in a one-lap bracket, creating a narrative and giving teams a spotlight should they get to that stage. In a series where pole position is good but not the most important element of the weekend, it works well for Formula E.

But back to F1 and unless you’ve shut yourself off from all F1 news, Cadillac are readying themselves to join the grid as the 11th team. A driver line up of Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas does have Fish and Cushion vibes, especially when neither of them did their best work with a Ferrari powertrain, but they’ve already had a dry run of race weekend strategy and are looking to test a previous car, not for mileage, but to test their on-track team. 

It also means a change to qualifying in 2026, with 22 cars on the grid, six get eliminated in both sessions before the 10-car Q3 shootout. 

I think Formula 1 have missed a trick with this opportunity. The issue you have here is that six cars going out gives the potential for it to be a little bit more boring. Having an odd number go out in Q1 and Q2 eliminates the risk of the cars going two-by-two and losing three entire teams. It’s rare that it happens, but part of the drama is seeing which driver is guaranteed to be outqualified by their teammate, 18 minutes into a session. 

I also mentioned that it gives the broadcaster time to squeeze in an ad break as the rights fees get higher. Even a few years ago, Sky Sports in the UK used to analyse each segment, but now after summing up Q1 or Q2, they go to an ad break too. 

My solution would be to continue with the rule of eliminating five cars in each segment, and having a 7-car shootout in Q4 instead. The extra Q allows broadcasters to sneak in a short break and the sport gets three opportunities to compare teammates. Going from 22-17-12-7 also avoids the anti-climax of a back-marker team reaching Q3 but conceding 10th by either not going out or going out on used tyres because they want to save them for the race.

The session would be made a little bit longer, sure, but 18-15-12 minutes would have a new 10-minute segment at the end. Drivers would now have to do four hero runs instead of three to guarantee a chance at pole position. They’d also have to be given a set of tyres for Q4 only, which, admittedly, does not help with the sport’s environmental credientials.

More drama, more chances to tell a story, more jeopardy without compromising the sporting side and putting the top drivers head-to-head in a time attack mode more often. Other than extending the overall length of Saturday, I truly don’t see a downside to this idea, and to some, that’s not necessarily a downside.

There was an interesting point that David Croft raised in commentary in COTA, where he suggested that the clock should stop after the first run anyway and give drivers the chance to reset. This is just that idea but taken a step further by eliminating five and keeping the system consistent of losing five cars after each session.

📖 Elsewhere in motorsport

Everyone is doing fancy liveries for Vegas, but VCARB have absolutely smashed it.

Pirelli announced that the Qatar GP will be subject to maximum stint limits of 25 laps.

There’s an Alpine car at Paddington to show a high-speed wi-fi trial on trains. Here’s my own Thread about it.

🪦 The headline reference 

All the headlines in 2025 are wrestling references.

I struggled to find a wrestling-related reference for this idea, but the four theme fits with an old-school match type. Four corners was where to win the match, you had to hit all four turnbuckles. Often it meant the heel would hit three, and the face would sneakily do the same and hit the last one.

Thanks for reading