Lewis Hamilton has called on Formula 1 to be more creative with its weekend format when hosting multiple races at the same circuit through the 2020 season.
F1 held back-to-back grands prix at the same track for the first time in its history this month with two straight race weekends at the Red Bull Ring in Austria.
The move came as part of the plan to bolster the 2020 calendar after the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the opening 10 races being called off, and will be repeated next month with two races at Silverstone. Holding multiple races in Bahrain towards the end of the year is also under consideration.
F1 had looked to shake up the format for the second event in Austria and Great Britain by staging a reverse grid qualifying race, only for Mercedes to block the plans.
While only one driver finished the second Austria race in the same position as the first one – Sergio Perez in sixth – Hamilton said he would like to see more variation between the events held at the same track.
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“I definitely think we should be trying to be more creative maybe, but I don’t know what that is,” Hamilton said.
“I don’t have the answers for it, but just shifting a tyre is not going to make any difference, literally no difference really for us.
“It’s a question of format. If you’re going to do back-to-back, it’s a shame we can’t reverse the circuit and go the other way, but obviously that was never in the game plan when designing these circuits.”
At the second race at Silverstone on 9 August Pirelli will offer a softer selection in tyre compounds in a bid to offer some variation.
The idea of changing the circuit layout has also been mooted for Bahrain, where an oval-style configuration could be used if multiple events are held at the Sakhir track.
But Hamilton said he was pleased not to have seen the reverse grid proposal go through, saying it would be “mayhem”.
“If we qualified at the front, and then you put us last it would be a bit of a difficult one,” Hamilton said.
“I wonder if there are other series that are doing anything different that we could look into.
“We have these two races in Silverstone and we could definitely do something to spice it up, particularly for the second one I think.”