Formula 2 and Formula 3 have introduced new rules over the winter, whereby any driver that directly causes a red flag in qualifying will be stripped of their fastest time in the session.
Despite the added jeopardy, DAMS driver Jak Crawford said: “On my side, it doesn’t change anything at all. If you have a spin in qualifying, your thought process in the moment is that you’re going to be last anyway, so I don’t think it changes too much.
“Obviously, it will change results. I can think of a couple of times last year where there were some red flags at the end of sessions and drivers got away with it.
“But at the end of the day, you don’t really think about it. Touch wood, the chance of actually crashing [in qualifying] is low. It’s not something you should think about.”
Zane Maloney, who will race this year for Rodin, added: “As a driver, you don’t think about that because then you will drive two tenths slower to not have a risk of crashing. So we’ll be pushing flat out, for sure.
“One thing it does help, which hasn’t happened in recent years but, in the past, maybe a driver on pole stopped on track or was spinning to cause a red flag. That is now gone.
Source: Autosport