MONACO - Formula One teams reached unanimous agreement here Friday to change qualifying to a single session and hope to introduce the new system in time for next weekend's European Grand Prix.
The team chiefs met here Friday to discuss a way to alter the current system, which sees the grid decided by aggregate times from two laps on Saturday and Sunday and has been unpopular with teams and the media.
The new system will see just one session run on Saturday afternoon, the traditional slot for qualifying, and the running order will be decided on the results of the previous race with the winner running last in the session.
The proposal has been put to the Formula One Commission and the World Council in a fax vote and the FIA said the results should be through in time to change for the next race at the Nurburgring.
The current system has been continually criticised by the drivers and on Thursday, before the decision was made, world champion Michael Schumacher said: "I would prefer to go back to one qualifying session.
"I think that is reasonable but then it would be nice to stick with that qualifying for once. If we change it now hopefully we wont change it again and again."
The change is yet another in a long list of modifications to qualifying, which began with the introduction of one-lap qualifying two-and-a-half years ago after a switch from the traditional best of 12 laps in an hour solution.
The single lap qualifying has always had two sessions and when initially introduced the first session, run on a Friday, simply decided the running order for the second session on the Saturday.
The two sessions were run consecutively on a Saturday last year and this year, another new system was introduced with the times from both sessions, now run on Saturday and Sunday, combined to decide the grid positions.
05/20/2005 10:18 GMT