Red Bull boss Christian Horner says qualifying not going to affect races like past – Formula 1
Red Bull Racing Team boss Christian Horner has said that qualifying sessions are not going to affect the races as much as they used to before.
Horner believes that if a driver takes the pole position and starts from the first place on the grid, his probability of winning is not as high as it used to be. However, he did not rule out qualifying at all.
The International Automobile Federation (FIA) has introduced some new rules for the 2011 Formula 1 season which includes devices like the Kinetic Energy Recovery System and Drag Reduction System.
Because of these devices, overtaking has become much easier than it used to be before. Since the past two races of the ongoing season, the overtaking rate of the sport has increased.
The recently held Chinese Grand Prix was quite entertaining and Red Bull’s Mark Webber made his way up the field from 18th to 3rd place on the grid which is extremely impressive. However, Mark’s qualifying of the race was very disappointing
as he was unable to make it to the Q2 session.
Nevertheless, Horner believes that since the race strategy is now a major part of the races unlike the 2010 season, the races are going to be more important than the qualifying sessions.
“It makes you question the value of qualifying. Now the cars can overtake and with such a big difference between old and new tyres, we are going to have to reassess at each track how important it is to get to the front of the grid. Our strategists will look
at how we should be structuring our race weekends,” said Horner.
Horner stated that since the new Pirelli tyres degrade much faster than the Bridgestones of 2010, more rubber lays down on the track as a result of which the grip level of the track increases and drivers take more risks for overtaking.
For every race of the season, every driver is provided with three sets of soft compound tyres and three sets of hard compound tyres. Normally they use the softer compound tyres during the qualifying sessions and save the harder compounds for the race day.
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