McLaren technical director for performance, Mark Temple, believes the newly announced regulation tweaks will resolve the drivers’ complaints – at least in qualifying.

Lift-and-coast and super clipping will no longer dominate qualifying, with the need for either “much closer” to yesteryear’s requirement.

Mark Temple outlines F1 qualifying rule tweak impact

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Formula 1 introduced new engine regulations this season, which included a 50/50 split in combustion and battery power as well as power boosts.

However, battery harvesting, super clipping and lift-and-coast took the “fun”, as Max Verstappen put it, out of the racing. The drivers weren’t even able to put in a flat-out flying lap in qualifying.

Complaints from the drivers and the teams, as well as safety concerns, saw the FIA sit down with Formula 1 management, the team bosses and the power unit manufacturers to discuss potential tweaks to the regulations.

The meeting led to a reduction in the maximum permitted recharge from 8MJ to 7MJ during qualifying, while peak super clip power has been increased to 350 kW. Meanwhile, the maximum Boost power during a grand prix would be capped at +150 kW.

The changes come into effect at the next race, the Miami Grand Prix.

While it remains to be seen what effect they have, and whether the drivers are happier about it, McLaren‘s Temple believes it will make a notable change in qualifying.

So much so that any lift-and-coast or super clipping will be “close” to what the drivers had to do with the previous edition of power units.

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“You have this, let’s call it lift and coast, or coasting into corners. Lift-and-coast and super clip into a few corners where you’re basically trying to harvest as much energy as possible to then use on the straights to achieve some of the very high speeds,” Temple told PlanetF1.com and other invited media.

“There’s some changes to the super clip regulations and the total amount of energy that you can harvest over a lap in qualifying.”

He added: “The biggest impact is from a driving point of view. The idea is to get rid of some of these things that the drivers don’t like doing in qualifying.

“The idea of the car coasting for a long period of time into the high-speed chicane rather than a more natural feeling of staying on full throttle and then braking harder.

“There are two parts to it. One of them is what we call lift=and-coast, which should no longer be a thing in qualifying, which is where the driver actually lifted off the throttle and then coasted into the braking zone and then hit the brakes.

“We’ve now got a situation where it’s more efficient, and that’s controlled by the power unit. So the driver can stay at full throttle and the power unit will recover the energy, Straight Mode will stay active, so the car slows down less.

“And then they also have the more natural feeling of going from full throttle directly onto the brakes rather than having this intermediate phase.

“In addition, the total amount of time and the duration of any single super clip or coasting phase is significantly reduced. So, when you do have that, it’s quite small.

“It’s actually much closer to some of the examples we’ve seen in previous years around tyre management or low levels of fuel management. So that will make qualifying feel much more natural to the drivers.

“There’s also some other more, let’s say, complicated rules that are just around the energy deployment and some of the intricacies of the way the energy is controlled that just simplify certain things for the driver.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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