Horner: "It's hard to say how each team is affected"

Although Red Bull Racing team boss Christian Horner welcomes the abolition of qualifying mode, he's not so sure how much effect it will have per team. In any case, the experts think that Mercedes will have to sacrifice a lot of power.

"It is difficult to say how this will affect every team", says Horner at the Sky Sports F1 cameras. "I hope that it will be tighter, especially on Saturday afternoon. But it's difficult to know what modes people are driving and how hard they're riding their internal combustion engine."

Horner says they will see at Spa or Monza how much effect the abolition of party mode actually has. "It will have an effect. We'll wait until Spa or Monza to see what that effect will be", he says.

"They definitely turn [the engine] up and down", says Horner about Mercedes. "You can hear the messages to the drivers. You don't know if it affects them more than us. It's not enough to just hope that their engines will shut down. We work hard to improve our car."