F1's managing director of motorsports Ross Brawn says the 2020 Formula 1 season would be a "good opportunity" to experiment with the race weekend format ahead of the 2021 rules overhaul.
Several ideas, such as sprint or qualifying races, shortened Sunday races or reducing practice time have been mooted in recent years, but trialling such ideas has proven to be difficult.
But with 2020 seeing very little in the way of change ahead of the major rule changes for 2021, Brawn believes it would be the ideal time to experiment.
"I’d like to see in 2020 for us to try a few things," he told Sky Sports. "I think in 2020 we’ve got a stable platform in terms of the cars, things aren’t changing that much and I think that ’20 could be a good opportunity perhaps for one or two races to try some variations.
"I don’t see any other way that we logically progress the race format. I think the basic race format is good but would a sprint race be interesting, or would some changes to qualifying be interesting.
"I think the teams are up for doing some variations during a Saturday to see if we can try out a better solution."
Brawn also believes there's an opportunity to further reduce costs by cutting the weekend down and reducing the impact on staff.
"We want the cars to run on a Friday but is there a way of shortening the weekend from an operational point of view for the teams, because they all turn up on a Tuesday, or even a Monday to get ready," he added.
"If we could restrict that, have a tighter parc ferme and controlled the time that a team was at the circuit, then we could shorten the operational weekend for them and turn it into a three-day weekend.
"We remember when you would turn up on a Thursday afternoon and everyone would get there, put the cars in the garage, and go racing. Now they turn up two or three days earlier because they want to get everything ready.
"I think Fridays are important for the promoters, it starts the weekend off but could we have two sessions on a Friday afternoon for instance? Maybe slightly shorter sessions, and then that means the teams can prepare on a Friday morning."
Discussion about this post