Not everyone is a fan but, in a bid to spice up the Saturday shoot-out of every weekend, which more often than not was not the spectacle fans had hoped, the copybook has been ripped up.
Now Q1 will last a total of 16 minutes with the slowest driver being eliminated from seven minutes in and then every minute-and-a-half until just 15 minutes remain.
Following a hiatus in the action, Q2 will last 15 minutes again with the slowest driver evicted six minutes into the session and every 90 seconds until just eight cars are left in action.
That top eight will fight it out in Q3 slightly shorter at 14 minutes with again the same policy of the slowest driver eliminated this time after five minutes and then at 90-second intervals until just the top two drivers battle it out for pole.
Whether they work remains to be seen and Bernie Ecclestone admitted: “I voted for them because I think we needed to do something. I’m not particularly sure that this will achieve exactly what we wanted to do but we’ve got to try it and see.”
Ecclestone and F1’s hierarchy at least appear to be listening to its global fan base in these latest revisions. As well as overhauling qualifying, cars will be noisier on the grid after complaints that F1’s automobiles had lost their required roar.
To enable such a crank up in decibels, each car has been designed with a separate waste gate for exhaust gases to pass through thereby creating more volume.