I Agree with this, Why take them away and call it a full race weekend, When it's not!!
When i first started playing 2011 i used to just skip them (which people could still do) because i though they were pointless but since owning the G27 i've been using every minute of them, Testing out different settings, Tyre wear and so on, But now i can't because i have only one hour, Also does't help when the Practice session is wet and its a dry race and qualifying.
Just makes no sense taking them away!.
But my way around this now is when the session is about to finish save all my car setups and restart the session, Annoying but it works.