Formula 1: Christian Horner suggests significant rule change

Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team principal Christian Horner believes that it may be time to change one significant rule that the series has.

Following the pole lap of Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis Hamilton in qualifying for the inaugural race of the 2018 Formula 1 season, the Australian Grand Prix, Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner has called for a significant rule change.

Hamilton’s pole lap of 81.164 seconds around the 16-turn, 3.295-mile Albert Park street circuit in Melbourne, Australia was more than six-tenths of a second faster than the fastest qualifying lap of 2nd place qualifier Kimi Raikkonen of Scuderia Ferrari, and it was more than seven-tenths of a second faster than Red Bull Racing’s top qualifier, Max Verstappen, in fourth place.

Horner believes that as a result of this dominance that Hamilton displayed in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix, it is time to neutralize qualifying engine modes.

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Hamilton used Mercedes’ qualifying engine mode to his advantage on his final lap of qualifying, which was the lap that secured him the pole position for the race, a race in which he ultimately finished in 2nd place thanks to a bad strategy call that put him behind Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.

The extra power stage that Mercedes’ engines have are reserved for the final stages of qualifying, and this is something that Red Bull Racing’s Renault engines do not have. Therefore, basing qualifying times on engine performance and engine performance alone, Red Bull Racing would be roughly four-tenths of a second slower than Mercedes.

Here is what Horner had to say about a potential rule change so that this is no longer the case, according to ESPN.

"“There are bits in the pipeline, but that’s more of a question for Renault than for me because they’re obviously not divulging everything they’re up to. It’s certainly something we’re pushing for.“Alternatively you could say perhaps you should have the same engine mode [for qualifying and the race]. Like in parc ferme when the cars leave for qualifying, maybe engine modes should be the same from the moment you leave the garage until the end of the grand prix.”“It’s extenuated here [in Australia]Bahrain you can overtake, China you can overtake. But it exposes you. You’ve only got to look at the speed trap [in qualifying] where all the Renault engines were grouped together with varying amounts of downforce on the car, so that’s where we need to make progress.“We know we have a good race car, the negative for us is still the deficit in qualifying. The ‘party mode’… we’d like to go to Lewis’ party!”"

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Will the rule change that Christian Horner suggested end up going into effect after Lewis Hamilton qualified so much faster than the rest of the field for the Australian Grand Prix, or will the Mercedes drivers continue to use their extra power setting to their advantage in qualifying? This will be an interesting situation to follow throughout the 2018 Formula 1 season.

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