The Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend saw a VERY late change to the structure of “Sprint Weekend”, ushering in new systems and a new weekend format. And I absolutely hated it! F1 need to either s**t or get off the pot when it comes to Sprints.
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The Good
The Sprint Weekend changes for the Baku weekend were ok looking on paper. For one, qualifying on Friday set the grid for the main race, and the sprint race no longer had any affect on the starting order of the Sunday race. A good change. Another positive note and something worth trying (on paper at least) was the mandatory medium tyres in SQ1 & SQ2 which threw up a few interesting changes. Finally (yes, there’s only 3 positives), it gave the people the people actually at the track some proper on-track action to enjoy all 3 days they were there, meaning they’re getting a lot more for their money.
The Bad
This was just another gimmick, if there’s one thing F1 fans hate it’s when the sport introduces these crappy gimmicks in the name of manufacturing entertainment and forcing it on us. For hardcore long-term fans, the idea of missing qualifying is a huge negative on the weekend; and for casuals, most will only watch the race on Sunday anyway. So who do these changes benefit?
Qualifying on Friday means the vast majority of fans, casual or hardcore, couldn’t watch qualifying for the race – especially those in Europe – given Baku is 3-4 hours ahead of us meaning qualy was in the middle of the workday.
While the mandatory qualifying tyre idea is good on paper, and has been floated for regular qualifying sessions for some time, the extremely late notice of this change of structure meant Pirelli didn’t have enough time to provide the teams with actually enough tyres for the weekend. Which meant that Lando Norris, who did extremely well to get his newly-upgraded McLaren MCL60 into SQ3, couldn’t take part in the final session because it was mandatory to use new soft tyres, and he didn’t have any new ones left because he had used them all in real qualifying on Friday. So already we were robbed of a potentially crowd pleasing 7th or 8th position for McLaren and a first-lap and potentially race-long battle between McLaren & Mercedes.
Sprint Weekend was not the Shot in the Arm!!
The next issue which clearly wasn’t foreseen, was that Sprint Qualifying was almost a carbon copy of regular qualifying, particularly at the sharp end of the grid. The only salient difference was that Verstappen and Perez swapped places. Also, despite being half an hour shorter than regular qualy, this session dragged on and felt very boring because there simply wasn’t enough time for the drivers to come in, change tyres, and do multiple runs – meaning we got 1 banger lap from all, and maybe a second lap where most of them couldn’t improve because their tyres were already dead.
This also lead into the issue with having 2 almost identical starting grids for the 2 races: we already knew how the Sunday Race would play out before the lights even went out. We knew Charles would make an excellent getaway off the start. We knew he would be very quickly hunted down by the Red Bulls. And we knew Perez was most likely to win on Sunday given his better tyre management displayed on Saturday. All of which came true within 15 laps of Sunday’s Race, making the rest of the 51 lap race extremely boring knowing Leclerc and Sainz had no chance of catching Max & Checco.
While we as fans all love the idea of limited practice because usually (not this weekend but usually) it leads to a bit more unpredictability and excitement in the race, the fact is the teams NEED practice time. Off-track testing time is limited so the only time to properly test new setups, evaluate new parts, and make improvements to their cars is during pre-race practice sessions. We saw with Carlos Sainz this weekend that if you can’t get the setup right within the single practice session on Friday you’re stuck with an unbalanced car you’re not comfortable with all weekend. In worst case scenarios this could genuinely lead to crashes and failures during the race!
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Finally, and this is for me is the biggest issue with Sprint Races: they still ONLY favour the top 3 teams. Extending points down to 8th was, again on paper only, a good idea, but actually it makes it just that more difficult for teams further down the grid to give us a shocker by outscoring or out-placing a big team in the standings. Red Bull, Ferrari and Aston/Mercedes (depending on whether there’s a long straight or not) are the only teams ever likely to score in a sprint weekend, which begs the question, why the hell do the other 6 teams bother showing up?! It’s just a huge and unnecessary risk, particularly in the cost-cap era! How much did it cost Williams and Alpha Tauri to fix their crashed cars from sprint qualy and race on Saturday? In an era with limited funds this is extra unfair on smaller teams.
The Ugly
Sprint races on paper are a good idea, and in other series like F2 and F3 they make the weekend extremely exciting and give us multiple winners per weekend, and give almost anyone on the grid the chance to experience leading a race and scoring a genuine podium in the sport.
F1 is not like that. In fact, it very much seams that F1 are going out of their way to NOT adapt reverse grids specifically because it would mean copying the junior series. There seems to be an arrogant air of “we’re the pinnacle of motorsport so we can’t be seen to be copying these lesser series”. And as a result we keep getting these mildly edited gimmicks which add virtually nothing to the weekend.
It’s a bit pathetic really. Organisers are clearly desperate to have this extra race in the weekend for the “spectacle” but they are blinded to the proper way of introducing such a structure.
The Answer
Adopt F2-style reverse grids, or drop sprints entirely! It’s just that simple. An F2-style weekend would make F1 a LOT more exciting. Picture the scenario: it’s Miami GP weekend, we have 2 1hour long practice sessions on Friday, we then move to qualifying on Saturday morning which sets the grid for Sunday’s race (meaning everyone can watch). Then, later on Saturday, we have a sprint race where the grid is reversed. This could be a dramatic full-grid swap and we’d get to see an Alfa Romeo or Williams on pole, or a more traditional top-10 reverse and we’d see McLaren on pole again. Points are given for the top 10: 15 for 1st, 1 for 10th, giving so much more incentive to smaller teams to outperform in qualifying, get a decent sprint grid spot, and fight for some genuinely meaningful points on Saturday. Then, come Sunday, we have the full race as normal, using the grid set by Saturday’s qualifying as has always been the case!
Simple right?! I think so! F1 need to s**t or get off the pot on this. Adopt a proper sprint weekend or ditch the whole thing entirely. Because let’s be honest, the F1 weekend structure was already pretty damn perfect before sprints were shoehorned in.
Let us know your thoughts on these new Sprint weekends in the comments. Do you agree with our suggestions for an F2 style weekend? Or would you rather see sprints ditched entirely?
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