Formula 1 is holding a watching brief over the potential risk of weather disruption on Saturday at the Brazilian Grand Prix, with a cyclone expected to hit the Sao Paulo region overnight.<\/p>\n
Brazil\u2019s National Institute of Meteorology has warned of an extratropical cyclone forming in the south of Brazil on Friday evening and then expected to advance towards the south east.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is expected that the Sao Paulo area \u2013 including the city region \u2013 could experience between 30mm and 60mm per hour of rain, with intense winds of up to 100km\/h.<\/p>\n
The conditions are so bad that there are risks of power outages, falling trees and flooding.<\/p>\n
Current forecasts expect the worst of the weather to hit the Interlagos track on Saturday morning before easing.<\/p>\n
The situation is moving around, but potential disruption could trigger headaches for F1 and the FIA when it comes to getting both a sprint and grand prix qualifying run on Saturday if conditions are bad.<\/p>\n
F1\u2019s sporting regulations are clear, however, about how things play out if bad weather interrupts play.<\/p>\n
What are the options to delay the sprint?\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first hurdle that F1 faces if conditions are treacherous on Saturday will be to get the sprint completed.<\/p>\n
There will be options to delay the start if the weather is too bad, but this cannot happen indefinitely as there is a window by which it needs to be completed because of qualifying later in the day.<\/p>\n
F1\u2019s sporting regulations state that there needs to be a minimum three-hour window between the end of the sprint and the start of qualifying for the main grand prix.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With F1 probably needing to get qualifying going before 5pm to avoid it ending in too-dark conditions (sunset is around 6.30pm), that would mean getting the sprint completed before 2pm.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That effectively gives the FIA a window for a two or three hour delay before it would have to start thinking about abandoning the sprint completely or moving qualifying back to Sunday.<\/p>\n
What happens to the points if sprint is shortened?<\/p>\n
One scenario that is not impossible is that the sprint starts but has to be abandoned early \u2013 either because of incidents or bad weather.<\/p>\n
This would have implications in terms of handing out points, with F1\u2019s sporting regulations outlining certain criteria needing to be fulfilled if the full offering is given out.<\/p>\n
The rules state that no points will be awarded unless a minimum of two laps have been completed by the leader without a safety car or virtual safety car intervention.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, if the leader completes less than 50% of the scheduled sprint session then no points will be awarded either.<\/p>\n
If more than half distance is done, with at least two laps free of safety car interference, then full points are given out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How will the grid be decided if qualifying is abandoned?<\/p>\n
Formula 1 showed last year, when Saturday was a wash out, that it is willing to go the extra mile to ensure that qualifying does take place.<\/p>\n
It moved the session to 7.30am on the Sunday to avoid the worst of the rain that struck 12 months ago.<\/p>\n
The option to have a repeat Sunday qualifying would be on the table again if Saturday\u2019s conditions prove impossible to run in.<\/p>\n
But if the session does not take place, then new rules introduced for this year provide a clear way for the grid to be decided.<\/p>\n
Rather than it being down to the stewards to pick a suitable way of deciding the grid, now if qualifying does not take place then the grid for the race will be decided on championship position.<\/p>\n
That means a Saturday wash out, with no option to run qualifying on Sunday, would mean Lando Norris starting the Brazilian GP from pole, ahead of Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1 is holding a watching brief over the potential risk of weather disruption on Saturday at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-251600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}