Alternative Ways To Determine The Starting Grid
But what would work best? A sprint around the track, an eating contest or something else?
Last Saturday many of us sat in front of the television, their laptops and phones watching the qualifying of the Italian Grand Prix. High on anticipation and engine noise, we stared onto the screen wondering if Ferrari is going to take pole and give their audience the gratification they deserved. Everyone else held their fingers crossed for their drivers and teams of choice!
When the cats and dogs started falling on the track, I did not put too much thought into it. In fact, being a battle hardened McLaren fan it raised my hopes a little bit. Monza is a track that would not exactly suit the ""slightly"" under-powered Honda "engine". Hence rain was good, rain would be my friend and before I knew it Alonso and Vandoorne would achieve a McLaren front row lock-out - as opposite to the nowadays more common McLaren back row lock-in after the penalties are applied ...
One day ...
A girl can dream, and she even dreamed of an exciting but realistic qualifying until it became too exciting and Grosjean decided to inspect a wall. The session was red flagged, and everyone crawled back into the pits. This was the beginning of what I believe was the longest qualifying session of my life. It started in due time at 14:00 (GMT +2) and ended around 17:40. While the television showed us impressive images of puddles, even my commentators ran out of things to talk about ...
During these hours the words "session delayed" became one of the most feared words of my life. I twiddled thumbs, I watched puddles on the screen, planned a whole trip to Spielberg, I drew stick-figures, and wondered what I'll eat next week.
With courtesy to tumblr [http://teamraikkonen.tumblr.com/post/164894371259/x-whats-your-worst-nightmare-me]
At this point I became so distracted that I began to wonder if there are alternative ways to determine a grid if racing is impossible.
Of course, the FIA has a system in place. Usually qualifying is re-scheduled for the next day. It'll be held in the morning while the race takes place in the afternoon. If that's also impossible you take the times from FP3.
In the here and now, this did strike me as rather boring. I wanted to be entertained now, and wanted to have my answer! Hence, I have complied a few reasonable suggestions on alternative ways to determine the starting grid:
An Alphabetic Order:
This seems to be the most sensible way to go about this. You sort books alphabetically, DVDs, and various names. This could lead to a few interesting races as well. Suddenly some teams are dramatically split. Just think Vandoorne & Alonso, Verstappen would become a back-marker for the moment, and Hamilton a mid-field runner. Meanwhile Ocon and Perez would start near one another and take each other out very soon. This would lead to a colourful and fun starting grid!
"Fernando Alonso takes pole once more, on account of having a surname that begins with "A""
At the same time, this is a rather boring and librarian-ish way to settle things. Even though the world would be a bit brighter with a McLaren and Alonso in front, it would consequently lead to the same starting grid for every race ...
Scrapping this idea I went onto the search of a more athletic solution:
Sprint around the track
Most tracks are so long or short that they can be run within the time a normal qualifying would take place. Spa-Francorchamps is with 7k the longest track of the current calender. A gently jogging turtle can manage this in around an hour. Most tracks settle around 5k, meaning that this alternative qualifying system would not take up more time.
Furthermore, while the F1 cars can't drive in any weather, you can jog in almost any weather. The drivers are pretty fit, so swapping the steering wheel for a pair of jogging shoes would be easy! And before you know it, they're off and you are going to have your starting grid within a jiffy.
I thought I had solved it all, I was hard-pressed to find any down sides to this. Jogging is easy, everyone can do it, the track is already there and it is not more time consuming than the normal quali. However, then I remembered that the last time I watched any marathon, or any jogging event on television had been ... never. It is quite boring to watch, everyone looks like a crumpled towel, you know where they're heading, and overtakes happen in slow motion. Literally nothing is happening!
In addition to that, it leaves the mechanics in the pit twiddling their thumbs. Formula One is a team sport where mechanics and drivers have to work together to create perfection! The driver can't do without the pit, and the pit can't do without a decent driver. Hence, forcing the racing drivers out on the track on their own goes against the spirit of F1.
Back to the drawing board, I had to find something that would involve the whole team like ...
An Eating Contest
Each team gathers around a plate of local food and digs in. The team which can stomach the most without something revolting happening is going to get pole and the more a team can stomach the better! It would be fun to watch, a team effort, and challenging!
However, these already mentioned revolting results tend to last for more than a night. This means that the next day we're very likely to watch a grid that could vomit into their helmets any give moment. Which is not very pleasant for the drivers - Mark Webber can tell you a thing or two about this - nor for the viewer who is going to listen to the team radio of "bleah, I just vomited into my helmet" while eating their breakfast.
He might need a bit more convincing
Hence, I decided to turn my attention towards something more innocent and involving less vomit:
A Paper Boat Building Contest
This would make good use of the rain that is falling. The whole team has to work together to build not only the most beautiful but also the better paper boat. It has to last the longest in the relentless rain and make it down the pit-lane the fastest as well.
At a given time everyone is going to gather and start folding the paper accordingly. Then it's going to be passed into the watchful hands of the driver. He'll run to the end of the pitlane, send the merry boat on its way. At the beginning of the lane waits the other driver who has to bring it back home. This way the position of the garage does not matter too much.
This is going to be a test of speed, teamwork and reliability. More importantly, nobody is going to throw up (possibly) and it is fun to watch!
The only rule in this is that any team that is going to name their paper boat "Boaty McBoatface" or similar is going to get a 60 place grid-penalty!
And so qualifying is saved!
Of course, there are plenty of ideas, so feel free to share your own!
Join In
Comments (2)
I thought it might be nice to send them each out in the Safety car for a hot lap. Time consuming though and if one of them crashed they would need to use the medic car, which is just not the same...maybe this wouldn't work!
Hmm, maybe teams would have to send out one driver in the safety car and the other in the medical car. Makes things interesting!