Irish-American executive Chase Carey, the chief executive officer and executive chairman of the Formula One Group, confirmed that Formula 1 is continuing to look at new ideas in a bid to spice up the current championship.
With the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone hosting two races each in 2020, discussions on how to differentiate the duplicate events from one another are ongoing.
One suggestion was a shorter reverse championship order race on a Saturday be used to set the grid for the grand prix itself. While the majority of the teams were in favour, Mercedes were opposed, and with unanimity required to push through any changes, F1 has had to abandon the plan.
Other options, though, are being considered.
“We’ve had one [idea] that’s been publicised about a reverse grid that not all teams were comfortable with,” Carey told Formula1.com – “Making changes in this short timeframe requires unanimity of support. We’re changing almost real-time inside the season, but we’ll continue to look at ideas. We want to make sure they’re not gimmicks. But we want to make sure that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t look at ways to make some changes.” – he added.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has called for the championship to try something different in the coming season, using the argument of, ‘If not now, then when?’.
Jenson Button also feels now is the right time for F1 “to take risks” in order to mix things up.
Effectively echoing both comments, Carey added: “To some degree, this season being unique gives a little bit more opportunity to try something that I don’t think we would do unless we thought it was a real possibility to add something to the race. I think we always want to be challenging ourselves and [looking at whether] there are other things we can do to make the sport better.”- he concluded.
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