Formula 1 managing director of motorsport, Ross Brawn, insists he’s not giving up on his plans to experiment with the race weekend format.
Brawn had previously pushed for the sport to adopt a qualifying race on Saturday at three events in 2020, but the plans were quashed by a handful of teams, which described the plans as “artificial”.
However the former F1 team boss has taken the view that if they don’t try something, they’ll never know if it works or not, and trialling it at pre-agreed venues means they don’t have to commit to it.
“What I’d like to see is some weekends where we do run a different format, and we can judge what the responses are, so we don’t commit the whole championship to a new format,” Brawn told RaceFans.
“That would be a sensible way to move forward, and find new avenues that would appeal to the fans and, and perhaps appeal to new fans. We don’t want to alienate our existing fans. We’re very loyal to our fan base.
“But if we can find ways of engaging with new fans, that would be for everyone’s benefit.”
The 66-year-old is confident two or three events would be sufficient to properly judge the outcome.
“That’s enough to judge the impact of it without debasing the championship,” he added. “What you don’t want to do is have a championship that’s spoiled because you’ve done something which creates strange results.”
Brawn, like new F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali, says he too would back a rotating calendar, to give new and old venues a chance to join the calendar.
“That’s something we’re taking into consideration: should we think about a rotation of [venues] to get a little bit more variety?”
