Mercedes reveal new Friday F1 format changes

Mercedes has revealed details as to how the new Friday running will unfold across F1 weekends from this season.

As the number of races increases to a record level of 23 this year, F1 has decided to revise its weekend format to ensure all personnel are not stretched to the limit.

The regular media sessions on Thursday have been dispensed with, although there will still be hospitality set-up and garage preparation for all teams that day.

The main schedule changes relate to the timings of the practice sessions, which at a number of tracks the first session previously started at 10am BST [11am CET].

Explaining the new weekend system in Mercedes' latest video ahead of the season, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said: "The race weekend format itself changes quite considerably.

"The purpose there is trying to give the teams less time to work on the cars, give them more time away from the tracks.

"This is really coming from the fact the calendar is getting busier and busier, they're adding more and more races, and we need to make sure we're not working people too hard.

"So the weekend starts later. The biggest changes are actually on Friday where the first [practice] session is at two o'clock, and the final session is at five o'clock, running from five o'clock to six o'clock.

"In Europe, the track is going to be cooling down at that time of day, and then you've got much less time in the evening. You've only got three hours where the mechanics will be working on the car.

"The teams will be allowed to stay in the offices for five hours but actually that's still giving us quite a lot less time than we've normally got.

"In that period you're trying to get the car specification finalised, you're trying to collate all the learning from the running that day, trying to refine the set-up and come up with the base set-up you're going to carry into Saturday, and into qualifying.

"Once you're into Saturday and Sunday, the format is actually very similar, so the big challenge will be adapting to that new layout on Friday."

You can catch Mercedes' latest video here -

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