As you can see in my WTCC preview here on TouringCarTimes, the World Touring Car Championship is implementing a new reverse grid system from this weekend's opening round.
Excerpt from the preview:
In order to prevent drivers from dropping places or hanging back at the outside of the top eight in race one, the reverse grid will now apply to the top ten placed cars from the first qualifying session.
How this will affect strategy in qualifying will be quite interesting, as it is now beneficial, albeit risky, for a driver to finish lower down in the top ten in the first qualifying session, and he can then go all out in Q2 for pole position for race one. This means the pole position driver for both races can theoretically be the same person, even after a driver wins in race one, meaning both races could be won by the same driver from pole position, which will be a first for the WTCC (and ETCC).
Also, if a driver suffers with a technical problem or damages his car in Q1 before setting a competitive time, that driver will be hampered throughout both races as the grid for positions 11+ will be identical in both races. Previously, the driver could at least work his way through the field in the first race to improve his starting position for race two. If he could also break into the top eight, he could even secure pole position for the second race.
The end result of this change will be a less random spread of points throughout the field – with points generally allocated throughout those with the capability of regularly qualifying in the top ten, which will certainly favour the turbocharged Chevrolets and BMWs early in the season.
So basically, drivers will no longer be able to manipulate the result of race 1 to impact where they start in race 2. No, now they need to manipulate qualifying to do it instead, which is a lot trickier so the WTCC is hoping no one’s going to try it. We may yet be surprised, but it probably won’t happen often; but then again dropping positions in the races didn’t happen too often in the WTCC either, that was always very much a BTCC trait.
I asked the director of a smaller championship once (one that had a race 2 grid that started the same way race 1 ended, a little bit retro huh?) why he hadn’t introduced reverse grids. The answer I got was he thought they were a bit gimmicky. I couldn't really argue with that, after all what’s the guy who finished eighth/tenth done to earn pole? Whether it's Andy Priaulx driving up to eighth with a gallant charge through the field from the back, or Ian Curley snatching pole at Brands Hatch in a three-seconds-off-the-pace Lexus as a result of just being last.
The truth of it is, reverse grids don’t really have a place in real motorsport. Qualifying is there to put everyone in the order of their one lap pace, testing their ability to set-up a car and string together that perfect lap. The race that follows allows for strategy, tactics and reliability to change that order and deliver a good event for the spectators and drivers.
In touring car racing however, there are no pit-stops, and the car just has to last 20-30 minutes – what strategy are you left with but go fast and bump the other guy out of the way? (which is quite often the one that’s chosen). Reverse grids are a necessary evil for this category of racing else you end up with exceedingly dull racing.
Quite interestingly there was a poll in AUTOSPORT last week asking the best way of spicing up an F1 race, after the suggestion by Bernie Ecclestone to add artificially wet conditions to rounds of the championship. Behind the very sensible top result with 67% voting for ‘do nothing at all’, reverse grids popped up in second place with 13%; so they definitely seem to be a publicly accepted way of dealing with the issue.
Looking at this specific change for the WTCC, why have we got it and why will it help?
Well, the culprit is quite certainly a former two-times British Touring Car champion called Alain Menu. On two occasions last year, the Swiss driver snuck back to gain a good grid position for race two. Feel free to read my older post here for more information and thoughts on those incidents.
To stop him and Chevrolet or whoever else dares from doing this again, they’ve now pointed the reverse grid at the first qualifying result instead.
It’ll be interesting if it will also be deemed a breach of Article 151c if a driver doesn’t go out in the last moments of Q1 because his 7th/8th/9th place looks pretty safe. Time will tell.
So will it help? Probably not. The dropping back issue was as I said, never much of a problem for the WTCC. If anything at least it meant you had two battles to watch as if nothing was happening up front you had the battle for eighth to watch instead.
The BTCC was the only series where drivers behaved strangely to drop back, I recall a race where three drivers were trying their hardest to finish in tenth place, all going as slow as they could. It was a year after this farcical behaviour that the random draw was introduced, it made the grid reverse a little more ‘gimmicky’ in a sense, but it works very well for the BTCC. However it's not something I’d like to see in the WTCC.
So how else can a grid be set? Well one of the most novel qualifying practices can be found in the Argentinean TC2000 championship, which just introduced a few new tweaks to their qualifying system at their first race last weekend.
They have a normal qualifying session, and then drop the positions of the top twelve drivers in the championship by the corresponding amounts (12 for 1st, one for 12th). Last year they had a sprint race with this adjusted grid, and the final result defined the grid for the feature race. This had a very strong effect on the championship results, I’d argue to the extent where this directly affected who became champion in the end, but it does mean they can do away with reverse grids and ballast.
Now, in a format not too dissimilar to the qualifying method used for the Daytona 500, they now split that qualifying race into two races (with a 34 grid, they’re one of a few touring car series who could dare do that!). Effectively this means each pass in the sprint race is worth two positions on the grid for the feature race. They also give points for the qualifying races, certainly a few more than the FIA GT1 World Championship gives out for its qualifying race (which is identical in length and format to its feature race).
It’s an interesting concept that works well for TC2000, but probably not suited to many other championships due to the smaller grid sizes and all of the politics that will be involved. Honda Racing Argentina Team Principal Victor Rosso told me last year when the championship and teams sit down to discuss the next season's regulations, no one votes against it as they'd rather have this than penalty ballast and reversed grids.
I’m hoping the new WTCC qualifying format does deliver something new and fresh, but as I’ve indicated earlier, I suspect the results will become less diverse as a result of this new system. In a year where Chevrolet are almost unchallenged at the front, the timing of this change could well be a little off.
I like the system in British Superbikes: the grid for race 2 is determined by the fastest lap in race 1. It's totally on merit, but gives the grid a bit of a jumble (the winner by no means always sets the fastest lap), and prevents the situation where a DNF in race 1 means race 2 is a write off too. Not a lot wrong with it, I reckon.
Posted by: 2or4 | Mar 15, 2011 at 19:18