Though it's the final weekend in October, the racing season is still thriving with Formula One, NASCAR and Moto GP all on track this weekend. I've been thinking a lot about some of the news rolling out and have my ideas about the state of motorsport.
1. Toro Rosso announced Russian Daniil Kvyat as the teams second driver for 2014. Kyvat is nineteen years old and is currently second in the GP3 standings, seven behind Argentine Facu Regalia with one round to go. Kvyat has talent but has he prepared enough to make the jump to Formula One?
In this era of very limited testing, Kvyat will be starting behind the eight-ball. GP3 is a much different animal from Formula One and Kvyat skipping GP2 or Formula Renault 3.5 is not the right choice.
The one suggestion I would make is with limited testing and so many young drivers in the pipe is the FIA and the teams create a series with year old cars for young drivers to get experience behind the wheel of a Formula One level car. Go to seven or eight Formula One caliber tracks that the series currently does not go to (Jerez, Estoril, Valencia's Ricardo Tormo circuit, Magny-Cours, Paul Ricard, Istanbul, Imola, maybe Donington Park, Brands Hatch, Zolder, etc) and with all the talk of customer cars in Formula One, allow customer teams run the young driver teams.
The series could race when Formula One is in Asia during the spring, run a few events during the summer on weekends Formula One is off and then finish the season when Formula One goes to Asia after the European season ends.
A race weekend would be set up just like a Formula One weekend with two Friday practices, a practice Saturday followed by qualifying and a full Grand Prix on Sunday. The series could be run with Formula Three as a support series. Of course there has to be some criteria for a young driver series so it isn't full of drivers who can't maintain a seat in Formula One. Maybe set a Grand Prix limit for a driver competing. Once a driver competes 50 F1 Grand Prix, they are no long eligible for the young driver series.
This series would give young drivers experience with a Formula One car, by running weekends counter to Formula One it would allow for GP2, GP3 and maybe even Formula Renault 3.5 drivers to compete and it would bring Formula One cars back to tracks that have sadly been left off the schedule for too long.
Are there some logistical issues? Sure. But putting logistics aside, doesn't it make some sense?
2. NASCAR is reportedly considering overhauling their qualifying format on ovals to mirror the group format used on road courses with Daytona and Talladega qualifying become a 60-minute open session.
First, let's realize that qualifying is not suppose to be intrinsically exciting. It is suppose to set the field. If a track record is set, fantastic but it's not suppose to be intrinsically exciting. Single-car qualifying is not suppose to be intrinsically exciting but it gives a driver a clear track to lay down a flyer and not bitch-and-moan they were balked by a slower car. How is NASCAR going to manage that on an oval? Imagine when Kyle Busch has his flyer ruined at Bristol because he nearly ran over a back maker. What is NASCAR going to do?
Keep qualifying how it is. If anything change the race format, especially on a short tracks. NASCAR is racing at Martinsville this weekend. Is there any reason why that race has to be 500 laps other than it's always been 500 laps? Instead of 500 laps at Martinsville, take all the drivers who set a qualifying time (so no DNQs) and break them up to heats for Sunday. There are only 43 drivers entered for Sunday, break them into three heats of 11 and one heat of 10, each heat being 50 laps. Take the top four from each heat and advance them to the "A-Main." The remaining 27 drivers go to a 50-lap LCQ with the top four from the LCQ advancing to the 150-lap A-Main.
For the 23 drivers who don't advance to the A-Main, they receive points for finishers 21st-43rd with the A-Main results settling who gets which points in the top twenty.
This could be done at all short tracks and even a few mile-and-a-half tracks to liven up race day and the TV broadcast. Of course you leave the Daytona 500, Coca-Cola 600, Southern 500 and a few other events untouched.
Once again, put logistics aside, doesn't it make some sense?
3. MotoGP is at Motegi and it is foggy. Foggy enough that it cancelled all Friday track activities, could cancel all Saturday track activities and turn the Japanese Grand Prix into a one-day show. Motorsports has to schedule their trips to Japan better. Two weeks ago F1 was at Suzuka, last week FIA World Endurance Championship was at Fuji in a monsoon and now MotoGP is at Motegi. Doesn't that seem like overkill? We got to spread out the schedule to Japan.
MotoGP use to go to Japan in the spring. Maybe they should consider returning Japan to earlier in the year. No international series goes to Asia during the summer and maybe they should. Maybe WEC should reconfigure their schedule so they go to Japan in early-August because the current schedule can't possibly be the best schedule.
Doesn't it make sense to spread out scheduling Japan's major races?
4. Watching Formula One practice this morning and it dawned on me the lack of live coverage for a IndyCar practice session and qualifying isn't helping the series, especially no practice coverage. This morning, Leigh Diffey, David Hobbs, Steve Matchett and Will Buxton had time to discuss what was going on in Formula One and let viewers know about Kyvat and some other topics.
IndyCar needs a live practice. The series needs a place where stories within the series can be discussed. You can't do that in a qualifying session, live or taped, because you have to follow what is go on; who is in position to advance to the next round, who is on what tire compound, etc. And you really can't discuss driver rumors or schedule rumors during a race. They aren't relevant to the race and the race is all that should be discussed.
IndyCar has to work with NBCSN to get one practice on live each race weekend. Honestly, if a 1 p.m. Friday IndyCar practice was shown live on NBCSN, what could NBCSN show that would get a better ratings? You have to believe a live IndyCar practice would get better ratings than anything shown taped and don't get pessimistic IndyCar fans.
Part of this is on IndyCar though. Example being Fontana. Qualifying was showed taped at 7:00 p.m. ET. What was stopping the series from holding off qualifying until that time? It could've been shown live. If IndyCar is given a time window for qualifying and it is a reasonable time when a session could be run then schedule the session so it will be shown live.
Once again IndyCar fans, instead of blaming the network for not showing qualifying live, realize IndyCar could schedule qualifying so it can be live. Doesn't that make sense?
Let me know what you think of any of these idea on Twitter, @4theloveofindy.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
