Nervous teams plan to skip Saturday practice

  • Published on 13 Mar 2014 14:01
  • comments 0
  • By: Rob Veenstra
Television and trackside viewers face a questionable spectacle on Saturday morning at Albert Park. As ever, an hour of practice is scheduled to finish just two hours before the all-important qualifying hour. Some teams, however, may not bother to send their cars out at all on Saturday morning.

That's because the newly V6-powered cars have not only proved worryingly unreliable in winter testing, but because repairing them now takes much longer than in the past. "Sometimes hours pass before a diagnosis is even made," said Auto Motor und Sport correspondent Michael Schmidt.

A full engine change can now take a whopping six hours, but Force India technical boss Andy Green added: "If we have to piece it together with individual parts, it can be 18 hours." FIA race director Charlie Whiting confirmed to reporters in Melbourne: "I've heard teams say that they'd skip P3 to make sure they have a car for qualifying." (GMM)

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