This year sees 22 drivers contesting the opening phase of qualifying, and drivers admit that it is going to be challenging.

"It'll be tough," admits Lando Norris. "It's already been tough in previous years with people not getting out of the way in the right places and things. It's tricky."

Referring to suggestions that the format be adapted, as was the case for several years, whereby the field is divided into several groups in order to reduce the overall total number of cars on track, the 2025 world champion said: "The thing is when you do split it up into other sessions, you have two sessions, someone's always going to be unhappy because you're either going to be the first group and complain about the second group, or vice versa. So, I think you get more people complaining in some essence if you split it up into two different sessions. At the same time, if people just actually look in the mirrors and use the radio for the reasons it should be used for, which is to give the drivers information about people on quick laps, I think it should be fine. But people don't seem to do that very often. Remember a couple of years ago?"

"Oh yeah, I took a penalty, right?" said Charles Lecerlc.

"I don't think it's going to be terrible," Norris continued, "but only if people get out of the way in the correct places and things like that. As soon as people try and take the mick with things, then it starts to become a big problem."

"I think it's a problem," argued Leclerc. "I mean, 22 cars on such a short track I think will be quite tricky, especially because with these cars, I mean, a bit less now, still whenever you are like three, four seconds on tracks like this, you lose a bit of time.

"So it's going to be tricky, but it's the same for everybody and we'll have to adapt to it. But it's not ideal for Q1, I think."

"If people look at the mirrors and listen to the radio and good communication, you can get away with 22 cars on track," said Gabriel Bortoleto. "F3 it's 30 cars. FRECA a few years ago it was 37 in FP, so it was much worse in other series. I think we can get away with it."

Asked again if F1 should split the field into groups, as is done with F2 and F3, Leclerc said: "Just for Q1, after that is fine, I think. But for Q1, why not? I don't know. I have never been a big fan of splitting the groups. You know, I think when you are fighting in the front, maybe it doesn't make a really big difference for you, but the way you split the groups, how you put each driver in a different group, it's complicated. It can affect a lot your qualifying if you are fighting to get away with Q1 and going to Q2. Yeah, I still prefer when everyone is on track together, same track conditions, and see who is faster."