 At the 2005 European Grand Prix, there was a change to the racing programme. The new qualifying system, introduced at the beginning of the year was changed once again, the Saturday and Sunday sessions replaced with a solitary Saturday afternoon round to determine the race grid. Until Monaco, Formula One cars qualified twice for the race this year, the overall time from the two sessions ranking them with fastest at the top of the grid. Saturday afternoon’s session was run on light fuel loads, in the reverse of the previous race’s finishing order. Meanwhile, Sunday morning’s session was run with cars on heavier race fuel loads, slowest from Saturday’s heat out first. The system proved controversial from the outset when rain split the runners in ‘Q1’ in Australia, effectively ending any of the wet-runners’ chances of qualifying higher than those who had been running on a dry track. Rain however has always been a deciding factor of qualifying sessions but as the season continued, crowds struggled to cope with the complicated new system and teams’ workloads spiralled as they had to prepare the cars earlier on a Sunday, the consensus amongst the paddock was that a change was needed and soon. In the Monaco paddock, talk was of the new system being hurriedly introduced and the required signatures of the team principles were collected in time for the new system to be introduced only five days later in Germany. For the remainder of the 2005 season therefore, Formula One cars now qualify for Sunday’s race on Saturday afternoon. With one ‘hot lap’ each, cars take to the track in the reverse order of the previous race’s classification (first to retire first out, winner last). Cars have one ‘flying lap’ to set a time using the same fuel load with which they will start the race the following day. Having set a time, cars are locked in the parc fermé where they cannot be touched before the start of the race. This U-turn should make Formula One qualifying easier to follow and although early runners will be penalised (as a track generally gets faster as a session develops and more rubber is laid down on the corners) TV viewers will be able to follow the sport more closely.
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