"Stupid" Quali games: Gary Anderson calls penalties for Loiterers

"Stupid" Quali games: Gary Anderson calls penalties for loiterers.

Gary Anderson calls for Formula One to crackdown - The partially dangerous driving in qualifying should be banned - He suggests a solution.

Technology expert Gary Anderson believes that Formula One needs new rules for qualifying. More specifically, it's about pilots who spend too much time on their warm-up lap, ruining the lap for other riders - or even putting them in jeopardy. In his column on 'f1-insiderr', Anderson calls for Formula One to respond to the "stupid" games of tire warming.

"In Bahrain, that almost resulted in a major accident between Lando Norris and Romain Grosjean," he recalls, adding: "And in China, it was a big topic on Saturday because the Red Bull and Haas pilots did not make their rounds in Q3 could start once. " Because the other riders dabbled in front of them during the warm-up, the affected pilots could not spend any more time at the end of the session.

The clock had already expired as they crossed the line. Especially annoying in Max Verstappen case: He was overtaken in the last sector of several cars. "It's a pity, of course, because we have a gentleman's agreement that you can not overtake in the last sector," he resented. Instead of gentleman's agreement according to Anderson now a new rule.

The solution to the problem is in his opinion also "very easy". Anderson argues during the warm-up lap for minimum periods in the individual sectors that drivers are not allowed to exceed. As an example, he cites 120 percent of the personally fastest qualifying lap in sector two and 110 percent in sector three. If you slow down, there is a penalty.

He calculates that the 110 percent would mean a two and a half second buffer even for a relatively short sector that takes about 25 seconds. "In China, it would have been even more because of the length of the sectors," he explains. He does not see the danger that the pilots would have to push too hard on cold tires during their warm-up lap.

"Warming up is important to the performance of the tires, but because there are standard tires, it's the same for everyone," he recalls, explaining, "It means that cars that are on a fast lap do not catch up so quickly. And it also means that there will be no more cars that will not move at all. "

"Hopefully, we do not have to wait until there's a big accident before anything is done," Anderson says. Other racing series, which had problems with people in the past in qualifying, is already set similar rules. For example, in Moto3, a similar rule was introduced after several times dangerous motorcycle situations occurred during qualifying.