Quali 101
What is qualifying? Qualifying (aka Quali) is the event that sets the order for the race grid for Sunday’s grand prix. It’s held on Saturday during a typical race weekend, but may be held on Friday in the event of a spring race. This is the event that lets the drivers push their cars to the absolute maximum. The entire event is one hour and it is broken down into three sessions: beginning with Q1, progressing to Q2 and ending with Q3.
Q1 starts with all 20 cars on the grid and lasts for 18 minutes. In this 18 minutes, drivers must set lap times and the five slowest cars placing in 20th, 19th, 18th, 17th and 16th for their lap times are eliminated.
Q2 begins with the 16 cars that progressed placed 15th or above in Q1 and lasts for 15 minutes. The slowest five cars, those occupying places 15th, 14th, 13th, 12th, and 11th are eliminated.
Q3, the final qualifying session, is 12 minutes long and includes the top 10 cars for the session. These 10 cars set lap times to determine the starting lineup for Sunday with the fastest car taking “Pole Position” as first place is known in qualifying.
Throughout this entire process, drivers must be careful to stay within track limits or their lap times may be deleted. It can be crowded out on the track with so many cars trying to set lap times within the time limits allowed. When a car is actively setting a time, that lap is referred to as a “flying lap”. Each track is broken into sectors and while on a flying lap, sector performance will be presented as one of three colors: a green sector is a personal best for the session, a yellow sector shows no improvement for the session, and a purple sector is the best of anyone for the session.
In between flying laps, drivers may take warm up laps, cool down laps, or return to the pit lane for slight modifications to the car. However, once Q1 has started, cars are placed under parc fermé conditions meaning that no changes may be made to the car until after the weekend is over or teams risk taking a penalty. In previous years, cars that progressed to Q2 were required to start the race on the same tyre compound that was used in qualifying - however for the current 2022 season that rule no longer applies.