The 110 % Rule in Qualification and how Schumi lost the race…
Mar 14th, 2006 by Haas
The change in qualification this year has already sparked of a controversy… It looks like the qualification rules was not clear enuf(atleast to me) and a deeper look into the rules cleared up a few things.
Firstly what was the meaning of that quote by Michael in the post race press conference
We got pole position yesterday, unfortunately I lost one lap in qualifying where, for traffic reasons I had to back off and I didn’t get the fuel, and if you look at it now, it’s the one lap that I was missing, in a way.
This is the explaniation of what Schumi meant and what we could not before the race read between the lines in the qualification specs:
In the 3rd qualification session people start the session with the fuel load they expect to start the race in. Every lap time is recorded and after the session the one with the fastest lap gets pole. But here is where the clarity diminishes… you get the fuel back only for the laps that took within 110% of your fastest lap.
This means lap u pit for tyres and fuel dont count (takes about 20 sec more) and in case of Schumi one more lap was discarded coz he was delayed in traffic.
Now the intresting point is how much did that matter… considering it was a really small diff on the track that let Alonso take the lead it sure as hell did, but traffic delays are a part of the race(it will be a good race if you dont get any). Wierdly Alonso had complained that the blue flags were absent in the race and that the backmarkers were kind to him…
Finally a bit of info which ppl looking at the times during the race might hv caught Nick Hienfeld had delayed Alonso in 2 of his hot laps and this was after Schumi made his first stop and Alonso made his first. Specualation was Alonso could hv passed Schumi in that stop if not for that delay… But as they say “All is well that ends well”