Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery has said that they will continue to work with the teams and the FIA to ensure that drivers who get through to Q3 actually set a flying lap, rather than just sitting in the garage to save a set of tyres.
Today in Japan, Michael Schumacher, Bruno Senna, Vitaly Petrov and Kamui Kobayashi all chose not to set a lap during Q3, exaggerating a trend that has become all to noticeable in recent races.
Hembery reveals that Pirelli have offered solutions previously, but these have been rebutted by the teams. However, he is determined to see this problem solved for the sake of spectators in the stands.
“It now seems to become a trend that some cars qualifying in Q3 do not set a time in order to save tyres, so we will be working with the teams and the FIA to find a solution that is acceptable to everybody to avoid this kind of scenario in the future, as it is not fair on the spectators,” he said. “We have made a number of proposals in the past, which the teams rejected, but today showed that this remains a problem, which we would like to solve.”