Formula 1 and the FIA are considering a move which would see an additional session added to qualifying for the 2019 season, expanding it from the current three sessions to four.
Currently qualifying sees five cars eliminated in Q1, five in Q2, with Q3 deciding the top ten. A new proposal submitted by Liberty Media and Ross Brawn would see that tweaked to four cars in the first three sessions, leaving eight for Q4.
It's not clear how long each session would last, but the benefit of adding a fourth session would mean there is more focus on the top eight cars as well as creating more uncertainty as they would be required to avoid costly errors in three sessions, rather than two, if they want to make it through to the final shoot-out for pole position.
The idea has been submitted to the FIA where it will be discussed further, with the governing body keen to avoid the same mistakes it made in 2016 when it introduced a confusing elimination-style qualifying format which was quickly dropped following a backlash from fans.
F1's Brawn recently commented on the need to spice qualifying up so it has a greater impact on the race result.
"You definitely want qualifying to be about the very best fighting at the front to see who's the quickest. But when you think about qualifying as an element of how the race pans out, then you want qualifying to stir it up a bit and create some disorder, so that you've got strong cars out of place.
"Then qualifying improves the race. So the level of jeopardy in qualifying is something we want to look at, where perhaps by reducing the number of runs a car does in each session, teams can't optimise everything.
"I think we'll move very cautiously, though, because the current format is popular and successful."
