Fridays are here to stay

One of the hot topics at today's meeting of Formula One team owners/managers, the FIA and FOM in Monza -- which, in itself was a continuation of last week's meeting held at Heathrow was the format of the Grand Prix weekends.

Max Mosley, the president of the FIA, had proposed limiting the race weekends to two days, and had received support from some of the top F1 drivers, including Mika Hakkinen, Michael Schumacher and David Coulthard.

The rationale for this change is based on the lack of on-track action during the Friday practice sessions, and the resulting lack of excitement for spectators.

Much of the lack of practice laps, though, is driven by a combination of the teams' multi-day testing sessions at the GP circuits immediately before the race weekend, and the tire limitations for the weekend.

With a limited number of tires available for the weekend, and with hundreds of laps of testing experience under their belts, some of the teams chose to minimze the driving on the Fridays.

Mosley's proposal was to limit the weekends to two days to ensure full focus, effort and excitement for all the sessions during the Grand Prix weekend. However, the team bosses did not lend their unanimous support -- which is required under the Concorde Agreement -- to the idea.

The teams and the FIA are continuing to discuss testing restrictions on the Grand Prix circuits, and possibly easing tire restrictions to enable teams to run more laps on Fridays.

And, in the end, this is what the spectators want to see: with Grand Prix tickets costing hundreds of US dollars in most countries, in addition to the travel and accommodation costs that most fans put up with, they want to see the cars on track. The audience is there to see their heroes, and the FIA and the teams must work out how to entertain them for the full race weekend.