Five radical changes to improve F1: No practice, two-race weekends, end low-risk run offs, allow single-car teams and experiment with tyres

Formula One seems to be in a perpetual identity crisis. The issues have become more prominent and publicly discussed since Liberty Media's takeover at the end of 2016 but have been bubbling under the surface for a while.

The problems are numerous but the ones most often mentioned are the lack of on-track overtaking, the dominance of the top three teams through a massive power imbalance and excessive and increasing costs.

Combined with the sport's inability to attract new manufacturers and a largely unchanged weekend format and you arrive at a problem that a new logo or theme tune cannot solve. Decreasing audience figures and the prominence of F1 on pay television are also a problem.

READ MORE: Noble: Players know they must help tackle community’s problems

READ MORE: Manchester City quality is untouchable, says Mourinho

READ MORE: Sancho 'not wasting thoughts' on Dortmund exit rumours

Changes need to be made. Those in charge seem to propose a new idea every race weekend. Drivers and team principals aren't shy of a word or two, with Lewis Hamilton even suggesting a radical format change.

This debate is healthy for the sport, especially with major rule changes expected in 2021. Even if you accept the standard Sunday race as sacred there is plenty of room for manoeuvre. Here we consider a handful of format changes that we think could work to the advantage of the sport's teams, drivers and fans.

Reduce tedious practice sessions or scrap them altogether

F1 currently has four hours of practice across three sessions every race weekend; two on Friday and one on Saturday. This is far too much time that has little meaning or significance to anyone but the most die-hard analytical nuts and the teams and drivers.

It makes sense that F1 has some practice running. It's good for the fans to see them in action but four hours is excessive. For much of the two 90-minute sessions on Friday there are only a handful of cars on track and practice is of little or no worth as a spectacle. After four hours, drivers are too familiar with conditions and the limitations of their car.

Halving practice to two one-hour sessions would be an improvement. But better would be reducing practice to a one-hour session on Friday or Saturday. Or perhaps even scrapping it entirely. We saw the results of having only 60 minutes of dry practice in this season's United States Grand Prix, which was one of the most exciting and unpredictable of the year.

It would give the teams less time to perfect their set-ups and would also make any errors more costly.  The sessions would have greater context and importance, making boring, meaningless and dull practice a thing of the past. Teams would have more unknowns to deal with in qualifying and the race. Or, if you wanted to address the performance imbalance, change "free practice" to "restricted practice". Give the teams at the front far less running time than those at the back. Say, the leading team gets just 30 minutes practice the team below them 40 minutes and so on.

A Saturday sprint race...using a reverse grid

F1's main feeder series F2 has a two-race weekend with a sprint race/feature race format.  It wouldn't be so ridiculous to introduce something similar a Grand Prix weekend,  a huge change though it would be.

What format should a second race take? It could replace qualifying altogether (although qualifying is a part of the sport which works very well at the moment) with its grid compiled in reverse championship order.  That way the top drivers would have to fight their way through the field with each other for a better starting position on Sunday.

This idea has been mooted by F1 bosses with the hope of attracting a larger audience and it's worth considering. As Lewis Hamilton suggested, the format doesn't have to be the same every weekend. The odd qualifying sprint race on circuits which are better for overtaking is more likely to excite than confuse.

Or, have a sprint race for championship points and use F2's format, with the grid calculated on results from the race before. Here the top eight from the previous race have their positions reversed (eight place starts on pole and the winner starts eighth) and everyone else starts where they finished the last race. Fewer points would be awarded for this race and the two-race weekend could take place at some of the newer tracks or the longer grands prix. Does the Singapore GP really need to be two hours long? It would surely be the perfect race for this format.

Punish driver mistakes by removing low-risk run-off areas

There are a lot of advances in safety in F1 that are for good, no doubt. That drivers can  walk away from massive shunts and be back in the car in a matter of hours with few ill effects is not a bad thing. But one of the worst things about modern F1 is the ridiculously lenient run-off areas that characterise many circuits.

Suzuka, a classic track if there ever was one, has little of this and drivers who run wide run the risk of shoving their car into the barriers. And this is how it should be. Also consider that these low-risk run-off areas mean drivers can abuse the track limits over and over again. Sometimes they get punished with a time penalty in the race or having their lap time removed in qualifying but this is often confusing and inconsistently applied.

There is clearly some need for asphalt run-off areas on high-speed corners or specific danger zones but they are far too common and give drivers a free pass.  There has to be some kind of compromise where drivers are punished or risk something significant whether damage to their car or tyres or worse.

Experiment with tyre allocations to make races more unpredictable

The lack of divergent strategies and tyre preservation in races have been huge factors in how predictable F1 races have become.  The sight of drivers eking their tyre life out, trundling around 10 seconds slower than in qualifying needs to be remedied. It's F1, not endurance racing.

Single-stop races are now the norm. The races with split strategies are the most exciting of the year - unpredictable finishes brought about by variations in strategy and tyre performance.

2019 will see a simplification of the naming of the tyre compounds for each weekend. "Hard", "medium" and "soft" is how the three compounds at each race weekend will be labelled. The "actual" compounds will vary for each race from five or six but and will be known to the teams and media.

This change makes sense logistically but it won't improve racing. The aim should have been to introduce a tyre selection system that results in teams on very different allocations, meaning they have to run different race - and maybe qualifying - strategies.

Instead of limiting the teams to three compound choices across the weekend why not let them choose from the entire range but limit the number of sets of each available across the year to encourage aggressive tyre choices? Or stick with the same three compounds for each weekend but stagger teams' choices so that every weekend a different team has the best pick of the compound allocation.

One week Mercedes might have first pick whilst Ferrari might be last. Some teams might have to prioritise qualifying at the expense of the race and vice versa.

Say no to three car teams but yes to one car teams

Three-car teams was an idea suggested by Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, seemingly driven by Esteban Ocon's failure to find a seat for 2019.  Contrary to a popular belief, there are plenty of opportunities for young drivers. Look at the grid for next year: Leclerc at Ferrari, Gasly and Verstappen at Red Bull, Giovinazzi at Sauber, Norris at McLaren and Russell at Williams. That's nearly one third of the grid at an average age of 21.

The only teams capable of funding a full-time third car would be the biggest and richest ones. And giving them an extra car would only make their dominance stronger. Decreasing the gap between the top three teams and the midfield should be the main priority but increasing the grid size should also be a target.

Having three car teams would work for the richest manufacturers but nobody else. But one car teams, independent or otherwise? Well, that could work. Running an independent F1 team is an incredibly expensive job but if you reduce the team to one car and those costs are much, much less.