Alonso was the star of Saturday’s Sprint Qualifying event at Silverstone. He started on the soft tire and jumped from 11th to fifth before eventually falling back to seventh.
The ex-world champion agrees that the new format will provide action on all three days, but believes Friday could be made more interesting with a restriction on tire usage and the number of qualifying runs drivers can complete.
“I like the format, I think we have three days of action, Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” he said. “So good for the people.
“When I watched the races at home on Friday last year, it didn’t mean anything, because the long runs are very important for the teams, the drivers, but not for the people at home to understand from the outside.
“I hope we can keep this format. And if anything, I’d suggest Fridays could be sharper too. You know, like a set of tires and a try for everyone, there are equal opportunities for all of us.
“It’s not an unfair qualifying or a reverse order or something that I understand can be unfair. But if we give a set of tires and a chance for all of us, it’s the same for everyone.”
Alonso pointed out that the Friday qualifying format used at Silverstone, where everyone rides on the same soft tires, doesn’t encourage variety and it might be worth finding a way to mess things up.
“Maybe it will change something because we saw that with six tries and six sets of tires we did in the order we deserve and, like every qualifying, in the order in which our cars performed.
“And maybe that can be changed a bit and the sprint qualifying on Saturday made even better if one of the fast cars is not on the first two rows of the grid.”
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Many observers and F1 insiders believe that something needs to be done to liven up Saturday’s FP2 session, which is now all about race preparation in Parc Ferme conditions.
However, Alonso believes the mileage is necessary.
“It was very useful to us,” he said. “I don’t know from the outside because you see cars with lots of fuel and different mixes and I don’t know if it’s a good show or not.
“But in FP2 it was the same in the previous format. Free practice sessions are very, very important for teams. So we definitely have to have them.”
“But qualifying, like I said, was maybe a little bit the same as always, you know, and the natural order of the grid. Maybe that could be improved a bit.”
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