Short track to calamity

SUPERCARS veteran Garth Tander says qualifying should be split into two sessions at shorter circuits to avoid a repeat of recent near-misses with slower traffic.

The qualifying issue was in the spotlight again at the weekend as Scott McLaughlin raced past nine slow cars on his Saturday hot lop before finally electing to back out.

It followed an even sketchier scene earlier in the year at Barbagallo where Shane van Gisbergen took to the grass at high-speed to avoid a gaggle of slow Nissans.

McLaughlin and van Gisbergen stressed it was up to teams to manage when to send their cars out and inform the driver of who was approaching.

TV show Inside Supercars polled several other drivers and engineers on the matter over the weekend, with varying opinions expressed.

“I think tracks under a certain size, like Perth, Symmons Plains, here [Ipswich] and maybe a couple of others, we should split qualifying up,” Tander said. “We used to run two qualifying sessions. That’s it. Job done.”

Teammate James Moffat suggested the MotoGP system, which also splits up the field into different sessions, should be looked at.

The format has the top 10 riders from final practice automatically progress to Q2, while the rest battle it out in a Q1 session for two remaining Q2 places. Split qualifying, based on upper and lower 50 per cent times from practice, has been used in the main and Dunlop Super2 Series in the past.

It was dropped from both tiers, however, after complaints that the first session was almost always disadvantaged by the evolving track conditions.

McLaughlin’s engineer at Shell V-Power Racing, Ludo Lacroix, took the blame for Saturday’s scenario and joined those suggesting teams must manage with the format.

“I blame myself for putting him in that position,” Lacroix said.

“It is very difficult for us in the middle of the pitlane to get a clean track. We need to make sure teams are doing the right thing, talking to their drivers, and most of them do it. I think we need to self-regulate.”