Brawn open to dropping Friday practice for more races
Liberty Media’s managing director of motorsport Ross Brawn has stated he is open to dropping Friday’s practice running in an effort to try and bring more races onto the calendar.
In an attempt to make a 25-race calendar a viable option for the teams, FP1 and FP2 sessions held on the Friday of a race weekend could be axed.
However, Brawn was also aware of the problem faced by race promoters if Friday’s were dropped from the schedule as there will be less of an event to sell to the public. This is especially poignant as Liberty have previously trialled four-day weekends in Melbourne and Silverstone so far in 2017.
“I think on the number of races, quality is the vital thing,” Brawn told Motorsport.com.
“There’s no point in having more races unless they are quality races – so location, the type of track, the ability to have a great race there is vital.
“The teams have logistical issues the more races we add, of course. One of the things we’re doing is looking at the format of a race weekend, to see if we need to change that to make it logistically easy for them to do more races. So we’ve got a very open mind about how we go forward.”
Despite the proposed changes to the race weekend format, Brawn believes the main event on a Sunday is not something he is willing to change.
Making changes to Friday running would be very significant for the teams who could lose valuable set-up time across the weekend. It could make for more unpredictable races.
Brawn also states quality of the events is of the utmost importance in order to sell the product back to the fans.
“I think the core race is still for me personally very important, we’re not looking at changing the core event. But open question, do we need Friday running?” he added.
“Because if we didn’t have Friday running, we could do more races, because logistically it’s better for the teams. But Friday running is important for the promoters and the broadcasters. How do we find the right solution?
“So we’re looking at all those elements to see the best way forward. Quality is the vital thing with the races, we mustn’t just add races because we can increase the numbers, because it’s not sustainable.
“We’ve got races in the past that came, the quality wasn’t there, and they fall away, and that’s not great for our business.”