New qualifying for next season.

In a move that goes against the grain of previous thwarted attempts this season, Formula One's team bosses have agreed on a new qualifying procedure for the 2005 season.

Provoked in part by the vagaries of the Japanese weather, which forced qualifying to take place on Sunday morning at Suzuka, the new format will see the second half of a split session take place on race day, with times from that added to a first session held on Saturday.

The first session will run from 1pm on Saturday, and fuel is free. In practice, that does, of course, mean that they will run with minimum fuel and in effect show the true potential of the cars, something that was missing this year. After the session, the cars go into parc ferme to stop the use of any qualifying 'tricks' for the out-and-out Saturday run. Teams will then put race fuel in before the second session, which will take place at 10am on Sunday morning. As now, there will be no more refuelling before the race, with cars being returned to parc ferme after their second outing. In a new move, the times from both sessions will be aggregated to determine the grid.

The split between no fuel and race fuel is one of the anomalies of the system, and teams will have to make sure that their cars are balanced and quick on new tyres in both configurations, which was not the case this year. It also flies in the face of the FIA's plans to slow the cars down, because they will undoubtedly be doing very quick times on Saturday afternoon.

Despite calls from some quarters to reduce each grand prix meeting to two days, Friday practice will continue to exist for the foreseeable future, after FIA president Max Mosley confirmed the changes had been accepted by the Formula One Commission.