Formula 1 director of motorsports Ross Brawn says there will be no "revolution" to the race weekend format, but there will be some "subtle" tweaks to make things easier on the teams, in order to facilitate an expanded calendar.
Liberty Media has expressed its desire to increase the calendar from 21 events to 24 in the future, but it's a decision which has been met with some backlash from the teams, which say they'll have to employ secondary race crews so employees aren't over-stretched or spending too many weekends away from their families.
There were suggestions that practice could be cut down to a single Saturday morning session, reducing the weekend down from three to two days, but this was met with ire from fans and circuit bosses who want to maximise on-track time.
Brawn says simple tweaks to how the weekend is run, rather than changing the format entirely, should provide the necessary room to expand the calendar.
"Subtly," he replied when asked of the scale of the changes. "It’s more evolution rather than revolution, with elements of the weekend tweaked to improve the show but also improve the working conditions for teams, particularly with the ambition to increase the calendar beyond the current 21 races," Brawn told Sky Sports.
“We are looking at how we streamline the weekend for teams but not in terms of track action. We want to have two or three more races per season, but we think we can do that by not overstressing the teams by trying to refine their weekends. To give you an example, there is a curfew, a limit on hours teams can work on Friday night and Saturday night but not a Thursday, so they all work all night on Thursday to get ready."
He added: “We need to improve the way we operate. Crates come in at all times of the day full of new parts [over a race weekend]. We can stop that. We can say the car that turns up is the car they race. It saves all that freight, all that work that is done over a race weekend.”
Brawn's also hinted that the handful of European races which don't have contracts after 2019 would be renewed, adding: "Despite the pessimism, I’d be surprised if we lose any races we currently have."
Qualifying tweak for 2020?
Meanwhile he also confirmed talk of tweaking qualifying for next season, with plans to introduce a fourth knock-out round, which would see four cars cut from Q1, Q2 and Q3, leaving eight (rather than 10) for the final pole position shoot-out.
"We are working on a qualifying format which is similar to what we have now. You get elimination and still have top cars fighting for the top places, but you get more action, so we have an hour of intense action."
