Brawn: Regular format Austria races can be exciting

Finley Crebolder
Austrian GP gets underway

Ross Brawn believes the Austrian doubleheader will still be exciting, despite the fact that no reverse grids will feature.

Given that the 2020 season will open with two races at the same track, the sport had looked at the possibility of replacing qualifying with reverse grid races for the latter.

However, the plans came to nothing as they failed to receive the required unanimous support, with Mercedes opposing them.

“We introduced the concept of a qualifying race, which was based on reverse championship order, and then that would take you through to the main event which would be the race on the Sunday,” Brawn said at the FIA Conference, as per Autosport.com.

“We discussed that last year, and we had pretty good support for that, but not unanimous. And it’s been the same case this year. There have been some teams who haven’t felt that’s something we should be doing.

“Our concern was simply where we have two races at the same track, because of the situation this year. We’re going to have two races in Austria, two races in Silverstone, possibly two races later in the year at one or another of the tracks.”

He is however still keen to change things up for doubleheaders later in the season, hinting that at some, the track configuration could be different for each race. The Bahrain track has already indicated it’s open to such an idea.

“There are some small things we can do with the selection of tyre compounds, and one or two other things, but I think they’re quite minor. [Reverse grids] were a bigger step,” Brawn added.

“One or two tracks later in the year have the added attraction they can run in a different configuration, so that might be an opportunity if we have a second race there to run the track in a different configuration and create some difference between the two races.”

Ultimately though, he’s not worried that the season openers will be dull without any changes.

“I suspect Austria is going to be pretty exciting. [It’s the] beginning of the season, nature of the track there, everyone settling in, and I think we will find that we have two exciting races there without doing anything to it.”

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