04/08/2020
NEWS STORY
In a controversial move it has been announced that the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola will feature just one free practice session.
The news was confirmed this morning by the official F1 website which stated that when the event "was announced last month, organisers said the event would be a condensed two-day race weekend".
However, it is not the "organisers" who dictate the timetable, rather F1 and the FIA. Indeed, previously race organisers have resisted calls to move to a two-day weekend.
The schedule for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix weekend will see a sole 90 minute practice session at 10:00 on Saturday morning, with qualifying at 14:00 in the afternoon.
F1 bosses have been keen to move to a two-day race weekend format in their bid to increase the number of events on the calendar, and the pandemic has effectively allowed them to push both proposals in through the back door.
Dropping two practice sessions at a circuit where contemporary F1 cars have not raced before and of which a number of drivers on the grid have little experience seems a strange move, particularly given the track's notorious history.
Surely, if F1 was determined to try the two day weekend it should have used the opportunity of the back-to-back events at the Red Bull Ring or Silverstone, as opposed to a track returning to the schedule following an absence of 14 years and for which there is little significant data available.
Perhaps the Grand Prix Drivers' Association shoud have words with the "organisers".