F1: Verstappen 'most nervous he's felt' when learning to drift cars
Max Verstappen has called for changes to be made to one of F1’s longest-standing rules after the Red Bull star doubled down in his criticism of the recently-expanded race weekend. The Dutchman should be in high spirits in Qatar this weekend as he is set to clinch his third world title, but the world championship leader is still not entirely satisfied with how parc ferme rules are affecting his team due to the introduction of the sprint format.
Verstappen was one of several drivers to experience issues with the balance of his car as windy conditions made it tricky to keep the car on the track at the Lusail International Circuit. It was later announced that 22 lap times had been deleted in practice due to track limits infractions.
And the 26-year-old believes that teams are being left hamstrung by the inability to make amendments to their cars due to the parc ferme rule, which comes into the place quicker on a weekend when there is a sprint race as qualifying begins on Friday, rather than the normal Saturday.
“It’s difficult to say where we would have ended up if we would have had a normal weekend, but with the track conditions for sure it’s a little bit more difficult to anticipate stuff,” Verstappen said, speaking in the post-qualifying press conference.
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“But I think we did the best we could really. I think it’s never going to be perfect, but clearly it was good enough and I was quite happy with the car in qualifying.
“But it can also be that sometimes – and we’ve had it in the past – you make a few decisions where you think it’s going to be OK and then it doesn’t work out and then your whole weekend is ruined because you can’t touch the car. I think that is a bit of a shame and that’s maybe something we have to look into for the future if we want to continue doing these kinds of events.”
Parc ferme – a French term that translates to ‘closed park’ – states that teams are not allowed to make certain changes to the car during specified periods of time on a race weekend when the cars are in their garages.
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Instead, they are placed under the watchful eye of a person monitoring while teams are restricted in what changes they can make.
The checks include weight and dimensional measurements, as well as equipment checks in which homologation labels are viewed to ensure parts are pre-tested and meet the required FIA standards.
With a quarter of the races on the calendar now including sprint races, it means F1 teams must oblige by the strict rules when they come into force on Friday as soon as the car leaves the pitlane on Friday.
But Verstappen’s calls for changes means the FIA could be forced to look into making some concessions to ease concerns of the drivers and teams.
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