FIA closes regulation loophole: used soft tires allowed in F1 Sprint Shootout Q3

FIA closes regulation loophole: used soft tires allowed in F1 Sprint Shootout Q3. FIA closes regulation loophole.

Formula 1: tire regulations change for the Sprint Shootout in Austria
The FIA has modified the regulations regarding the tires to be used in the Sprint Shootout, the qualifying session that determines the grid for the Sprint race. At the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, the venue for the second Sprint event of the year, drivers who qualify for the final phase of the Sprint Shootout will be allowed to use used soft tires, unlike in Baku where the compound had to be new.

Niels Wittich’s note
In the notes from the race director Niels Wittich, Article 30.5 h) iv of the sporting regulations is clarified and updated. Until yesterday, it stated: “During the SQ3 period of the Sprint Shootout, up to one set of dry tires may be used, and it must be a new set of soft tires.”
Niels Wittich’s note has removed the term “new” after the approval of nine out of ten teams.

The reason for the change
The reason for Niels Wittich’s correction stems from a regulation loophole that emerged at the Baku City Circuit. In Azerbaijan, where the first Sprint event of the 2023 Formula 1 season took place, Lando Norris was unable to run in SQ3 because he had exhausted his new set of soft tires. It was a calculated risk for the British driver, who preferred to keep all his options for the Friday qualifying session for the Grand Prix: worst-case scenario, he would start 10th in the Sprint, which is what happened.

Paradoxically, Lando Norris could have run in Sprint Shootout Q3 with wet tires because the original regulation only referred to dry compounds and did not address the use of intermediate or wet tires. And he would have done so if Yuki Tsunoda (the other driver who ran out of new soft tires before the Sprint Shootout) had also qualified for SQ3: with both of them in the top ten, there would have been a paradoxical Norris-Tsunoda duel on intermediate tires on a dry track for ninth place on the Sprint grid. This is an eventuality that Formula 1 could not allow for reasons of image and safety.