Forum topic: Season format: a case for more races and less lottery

The current 13-week season contains three test weeks (weeks 1, 2, and 8). That's three weeks without racing — three weeks where nothing competitive happens. Consolidating those into a single test week would immediately add two races to every season without touching anything else.
Alternatively, we could look at extending the season outright. The theoretical justification for keeping seasons at 13 weeks is fitting four of them into a calendar year. That math requires 52 consecutive weeks of uptime with no server downtime exceeding a few days. I'd genuinely like to know how many of the last ten years that was actually the case — because everyone who's been around long enough already knows the answer.
The deeper issue isn't just race count, though. Ten races is too short a window for a meaningful comeback. If a team starts a season on the back foot — whether from a bad lottery result, a rough opening race, or just an unlucky development cycle — there simply isn't enough runway to close the gap through good management. The season ends before the recovery can materialize.
Which brings us to development. A more deterministic development system — one where effort and strategic choices drive progress rather than draw luck — would make race count matter more, not less. Longer seasons only reward skill if teams have the tools to actually act on their decisions. Right now, two teams can make identical choices and end up in very different places based purely on randomness. That's not tension, that's noise.
More races and a less lottery-dependent development model aren't two separate requests. They're two parts of the same argument: seasons should be long enough for management quality to show, and the game should give teams a real lever to pull when they're behind.

i agree about have more race in the season, but i don't like a season longer than 13 weeks. Imho 13 weeks is already long, but it's difficult to have more race and a shorter season so 12 race and 13 weeks could be a good trade off. And in race weeks we should use tuesday and maybe also monday as test days.

regarding competitiveness, imho the first thing that is needed is to have a balanced income from fans, i said that many times and explained why we need it. reassuming this whole thing is that we won't have a real competition if 1, 2 or 3 teams have 8-10-12 (or more) millions money income per week from fans compared to the rest of the teams. also adding that the number of fans is uncapped mean that close this income gap is impossible.

honestly i don't think that the development is too "lottery dependant". what do you exactly mean?
btw Frank has already said that a new development system could be possible so hopefully that could bring some more competitiveness itself.

I think using Tuesday as a test day makes a lot of sense. Maybe even Friday - with an option to qualify early or preset a quali lap to avoid disadvantaging those people who play during work hours on their breaks. My concern with reducing the number of test weeks is that I used these A LOT in my first two seasons to refine strategy with unlimited tyres and less pressure on mechanic points that obviously would be an issue (particularly tyres) during race weekends.

I think 10 races a season (or maybe 12 to keep the 13 week structure) is alright. F1 didn't have many more than this (16) for many years and the anticipation/guessing eventual pace etc., of the early part of the season is MUCH more interesting that than being in a division where there are 4 inactive teams going down and a runaway winner. Lengthening seasons just increases the likelihood of that happening.

Think i'm also a fan of 11 or 12 races in a season but keeping it at 13 weeks, i also agree it's already on the long side. There are times where a tight battle would be fun to go on for longer, but i think equally often (probably more often) it's already concluded and everyone is just racing for the sake of it. Whilst the shorter amount of races do mean more randomness, it's also fun to have a bit of an upset in the results sometimes.