Formula 1 chief executive Stefano Domenicali surprised the fans at the weekend when he told Portuguese broadcaster SportTV that he would prefer free practice sessions to be dropped from the race weekend program in the world championship.
But then it turned out that the situation was a little different.
“I support the cancellation of free practice sessions, which are very useful for the engineers, but this does not appeal to the public”, explained Domenicali on Portuguese television.
According to various media outlets, Domenicali’s idea is not to eliminate free practice, which would not be well received by the teams, but rather to make it more meaningful for the race weekend. One option is for free practice rankings to also carry points, but these changes are yet to be seriously discussed by F1, the FIA and the teams.