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Why should a team be rewarded for failure?

Well how are they going to improve?

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

That's beside the point - as I said, Lotus and Virgin have proved that you can easily get within 107% starting from scratch, so there are no excuses for any other constructor not making 107% from the beginning

I love minnows but you shouldn't make excuses for them. If they're not good enough, they're not good enough. We shouldn't have this socialist nonsense of rewarding them because they can't build a decent car. A team like that will never succeed in F1. Just let them die - it's for the best. If they can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen

It should only be for new teams, they're the ones who'll need it and there will have to be a limit otherwise they'll purposely miss 107% to get testing time for both drivers.

+1

Just not helping them when they get over 107% isn't going to solve anything. It's all good now because you can say 'Oh so what if HRT go, there would still be another 11 teams' but lets not forget that these companies employ around 200+ people who have families etc. Remember that by the end of 2009, it was looking like we might have ended up with only 7 teams as Toyota and BMW pulled out, Renault looked like they might whilst STR were up for sale.

2010 will be a transitional year with the leading 18 followed by the new 6. In 2011 the new 6 will be closer but still not on the pace, with ART (probably) lagging behind thanks to the FIA's slow pace in allocating the slot

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Which has been the main problem, the FIA has been so slow at giving the go ahead for new teams.

Yes but if they can't build a car that's not quick enough to get into the race, they shouldn't come cap in hand to the FIA asking for mercy. There are other teams that have shown it can be done. No excuses. If you can't build a car that's good enough, you shouldn't be given any favours. That is the team's problem, not the FIA's. It's their responsibility to build the car, it's their responsibility to raise the money, and so it's their responsibility if the cars don't make the race and the team goes under. It's called business

And ART's car will be built by Toyota so they won't have any problems

Most teams start developing their car for next year way before the start of the season before, ie: at the start of 2010 teams are developing for 2011. When the FIA don't give the green light until, I believe its July 15th, that team has some work to do!

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

If they've got any common sense, they'll have done quite a bit of work on a design already. And Toyota have a 2010 car to start from

True, and looking at the TF110, it looks like a bloody good car

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

IMO the rule itself is fine. However I don't know if the number 107% is appropriate here.
In Valencia the slowest driver was 2,5 sec ahead of the 107% limit, so would qualify without a problem.

Here is the list of the drivers outside 107% so far this season:
Bahrain - Chandhok, Senna
Malaysia - Di Grassi
Spain - Senna (by a few thousands of a second)
Monaco - Alonso (no time in qualifying)
Canada - Chandhok

In the remaining races everybody would qualify.
And now we clearly see that the new teams are improving, so I don't think they will have problems with breaking the 107% time.

Wet weather means drivers are exempt AFAIK

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

IMO that should be applied only if conditions aren't equal for everyone :P

If you fail to qualify in wet conditions and the conditions are stable than you're too slow and you shouldn't race

It's good.

I remember when it was introduced in the 1995 (?) it was very severe for teams like Pacific, Forti or Simtek. Yet they managed to qualify most of the time, but still ran out of money after a couple years.

Now the field is so much closer than in the 90s, top teams complain about newcomers, but we can give credit to the new teams that are well within those 107% most of the time. so what would that change? How about a 104% rule if they really want them to catch up?
In Valencia, Virgin and HRT were between 4 and 5% slower on a 100 second lap.

To be fair, the rule should be based on Q1 best time, as in Q3 the leaders are even faster.

It was introduced for '96, only Forti failed a few times before going titsup.

'95 still had the old 26 maximum but when Larrouse and Lotus folded they were left with 26 cars anyway.

It is.

I expect there will be a force majeure for this type of scenario so these cars can race.

Actually if a car/driver has decent pace on practice, the stewards can let them race even if they didn't set a time inside the 107% on qualifying, according to the new rule.

That's always been the case with the rule. Pedro Diniz was outside the 107% for Australia 97 but the stewards let him in because the car wasn't miles off the pace