Sidepodcast - All for F1 and F1 for all

Do you like knowing race strategies in advance? - The qualifying tweak takes away some of the mystique on Saturday

Published by Mr. C

From the first race of 2009 Formula One season, the FIA are making public the weights of the cars, including race fuel, following on from Saturday's qualifying.

A change has been made to this years sporting regulations, and Article 26.2 now states that:

Within two hours of the end of qualifying practice session the race start weight of all cars eliminated in Q1 and Q2 must be declared by the relevant teams to the technical delegate. These weights, together with the weights of the top ten cars following qualifying, will then be published by the press delegate.

This presumably has been designed to help fans understand which car really is the fastest at the end of the third session of qualifying, but conversely it means one element of strategic surprise has been denied to us for Sunday.

BlogF1 has provided a rather lovely looking table, detailing the contents of today's FIA publication, as well as an analysis of who is running what strategy. Armed with this "new for '09" information, will it make the racing more or less enjoyable?

After a bit of a debate in the comments, the views appeared divided and Dirty Scarab suggested we have poll.

Please do tell us in the comments below why you voted the way you did. If you approve, why is it a good thing, and if you don't what would you change and why?