The FIA has announced that from this weekend’s European Grand Prix, the Sunday qualifying session will be replaced in favour of a single qualifying session on Saturday.

The FIA has announced that from this weekend’s European Grand Prix, the Sunday qualifying session will be replaced in favour of a single qualifying session on Saturday.

Qualifying will now take place over a one-hour session on Saturday and will involve a single timed lap with race fuel under “parc ferme” conditions.

The running order remains unchanged, with the winner of the previous race going out last.

"It's very important to have the grid sorted out on Saturday," FIA president Max Mosely said. “It irritates the public not knowing who is on pole. People need to know - it's no good telling them two hours beforehand.”

"If you follow a particular driver and you know he's going to be on pole you might change your plans for Sunday. But on the other hand if you know he's at the back of the grid you might go and do something completely different.

Teams would be unable to refuel the cars or modify them between qualifying and the race.

The format was changed in 2003 from a one-hour session to two single-lap sessions. With this format, the Friday session was used to determine the order in which the cars would vie for grid positions in Saturday’s session.

Both sessions were run on the Saturday last year, before the second session moved to Sunday with both runs deciding the grid positions.

Original article from Car