Following approval at this week’s F1 Commission meeting, this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix will witness a revamped schedule.
Saturday’s running will be completely standalone from the rest of the weekend, with there being a sprint shootout qualifying session in the morning followed by the short race in the afternoon.
The change means that teams will lose the normal Saturday morning free practice session where they have traditionally gathered their long run data to help with tyre strategies for the race.
Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin says losing that extra hour of practice will compromise race preparations in particular.
"When you've only got FP1, it's practically impossible to condense all the usual learnings across Friday and Saturday into one session,” he said.
“You lose the opportunity to focus on the long run and you've got to think about what the real priorities are."
Mercedes sporting director Ron Meadows reckoned that one of the consequences of the revamp was that teams would have to sacrifice a lot of what they normally do in practice.
He said: "It will be very tricky for the engineers and drivers to find the optimum set-up for both qualifying and heavy race fuel trim.
"We will need to maximise the number of laps in FP1, so we likely won't be planning on making set-up changes that sap running time for the drivers. It's a new way of working for all the teams and provides a fair amount of opportunity to excel."
Source: Autosport