F1 considers Friday competition to spice up weekends

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Formula One teams are considering introducing a $1 million prize for the fastest car on Fridays in order to liven up grand prix race weekends.

The newly formed Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) will have further discussion at the upcoming races in Japan and China in the hope of bringing in a new competition for Fridays.

"At the moment we formulated a Friday testing format, but in reality no one is doing the normal disciplined testing. We are preparing for the race," McLaren chief executive Martin Whitmarsh was quoted as saying in Autosport magazine.

"So we say, is this good value? Does it help the show? Or do you perhaps do something where you say, let's cut it down to 45 minutes only, maybe you give a completely different specification of tires, a really hard tire, and you create a mini-competition where everyone tries to set the fastest time and you give a million dollars to the winning driver?"

Currently the only F1 action on tracks on Fridays is two practice sessions in which teams tweak the setups and tire choices for Saturday's qualifying and Sunday's race.

It is of more interest to team engineers than spectators and receives almost no television coverage.

"It means there would be something to write about and it introduces the weekend," Whitmarsh said. "It is separate from the race. So there are all those sort of ideas about.

"The good thing is that people now realize that we do have to do something and have quite a creative open discussion. And I hope over Japan and Shanghai that we will reach some conclusions.

"We then have to make recommendations to FOTA and that has to then go through the FIA, but hopefully we can do that."

FOTA was formed only in July, representing all 10 teams. It is designed to provide a united voice to the FIA, the sport's governing body, about the future of F1.