No Second Chance heat at 2016 CIK races

The CIK has just published news regarding the format of the European and World Championships races for next season, not only for the new OK and OKJ classes, but also for KZ.
Following a proposal of WSK Promotion, the International Karting Commission has changed the format of the races with the (understandable) intention to increase track time before the final, giving even more opportunities for testing during the event itself, without having to go to the track before the actual event to test. Therefore, private testing in the week prior to the race until Tuesday of race week has been banned. Wednesday and Thursday will be entirely dedicated to unofficial free practice (until this year it’s been only on Thursday); official free practice and qualifying will be held on Friday, and then the group heats will be held on Saturday and eventually on Sunday morning, followed by pre-finals and finals.
 
The novelty is the cancellation of Sunday’s Second Chance Heat, replaced by the two pre-finals formula (of course, only when there are more than 34 drivers, otherwise drivers will qualify automatically) out of which the first 17 classified in each prefinal will go through to the finals. Moreover, also the pre-finals will award points, 17 for the 1^st finisher, 16 for the 2nd and so on till the 17^th finisher, scoring 1 point.
This new formula, however, does not seem ideal, because the pre-finals will be even more decisive (in a negative sense) than the final itself. Let’s explain with a practical example: if the pole man was thrown out at the start of the final, it would lose the victory and the points of the race, but if that happened in the prefinal he would lose the points of both final and pre-final, then with a greater disadvantage. Instead, the Second Chance Heat system allowed those drivers who experienced problems in the heats to try and have one last attempt to enter the final, while making sure the top ranked after the heats would not risk losing points.
 
In short, in 2016 the unlucky drivers plagued by technical problems or unfortunate incidents will not be safeguarded, while the chances of compromising the whole race weekend will multiply. It doesn’t seem a good result.
 

Read the official press release