Three exciting ways to fix F1’s growing sprint race problem

Following another anti-climatic race in Austin, the question on everyone’s mind is: how do you fix sprints?

The F1 weekend schedule has not always been set in stone but, for 70 years, it followed roughly the same pattern – practice, qualifying, race.

Of course there were some variations. Between 1950 and 1996, practice and qualifying were combined in two hour-long sessions giving drivers the opportunity to both practice and set a qualifying time. Back when there were as many as 39 cars on the track, drivers also used to have to pre-qualify although that was abolished in 1992.

From 1996 onwards, the one-hour qualifying session came into play so while it was still not the same as we have today, it was beginning to look more like it. The early 2000s though saw plenty of change from one-lap qualifying, aggregate qualifying and an elimination system but in 2016, the current format was devised and accepted.

That was until 2021. In came the sprint which at first replaced just one practice session with qualifying for the mini-race being set on Friday. The finishing order of the sprint would then decide the starting order for the race on Sunday.

In 2023, a further tweak was made, cutting the practice sessions down to just one and making Saturday a sprint-only day. The sprint would no longer set Sunday’s grid and would have its own quali session but it has yet to produce the kind of excitement F1’s owners may have hoped for.

When has the sprint worked?

Truthfully, there has been only one occasion where the sprint produced an exciting race – the 2022 Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

The excitement of that race was more by chance than by design. In a season of dominance from Red Bull, Mercedes emerged as a victory contender. In the sprint, Verstappen ran over debris caused by team-mates Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon hitting one another which severely impacted his performance. Later on he tangled with Carlos Sainz in an incident that badly damaged his front wing meaning the Dutchman just barely held onto fourth.

刘易斯·汉密尔顿同时开始第八,但这样的was the performance of his W13 that he was able to cut his way through the grid and end up finishing third with team-mate George Russell winning.

Even the biggest detractor of sprints would have had to admit that the short burst in Sao Paulo was exciting but even then, there is a question of would it have been more exciting in the race itself?

Verstappen甲型肝炎e his undertray and wing replaced and was back to fighting fitness for the race itself. Hamilton, starting from third, no longer had a need to charge through the grid and while the race did have moments of excitement, it would no doubt have been better had the sprint not taken place.

This is a theme that has continued on into 2023. So far the year has seen five of the six that will take place and not one has been hugely entertaining, meaning the format has come increasingly under criticism from the drivers, most notably Verstappen.

That backlash has reportedly forced F1 to consider wild alternatives such as reverse grids and a seperate sprint championship but how do you fix the sprint problem?

Option 1– F1 goes all out

Did someone say sprinklers? While outlandish changes were more a characteristic of the former regime, recent reporting would suggest Liberty Media are willing to go all out if it means keeping the sprints on the schedule.

According to an Autosport report, there have been suggestions of reverse grids and a separate sprint championship but this has just as much chance of producing the opposite effect as it does improving the spectacle.

For starters, reverse grids pose a problem in themselves. If you are Red Bull and know you have the quickest car, what incentive do you have to go quickly in qualifying? You may as well aim for P20 or P11 if only the front half will be swapped and make your life easier. You could realistically have a situation where the drivers are purposely going slowly in order to avoid being punished for performance.

In terms of a sprint championship, that is just as likely to make drivers switch off. In 2018, football’s organisers FIFA attempted to make international friendlies more exciting by introducing a new tournament called the Nations league but five years on, winning the trophy is far less important to countries than the additional benefit of qualification to one of the existing tournaments is.

Yes, you could see the bigger teams not care about winning a sprint title and thus leading to a new victor but a prize pot of just $1 million has been mooted. To put that into context, the P10 finishers in this year’s Constructors’, currently AlphaTauri, will receive 6% of a suspected $900 million prize pool.

From the drivers’ perspective, all but two of them earn more than that as part of their annual salary.

The drivers’ opinion of the sprint format and the acclaim that it brings could perhaps best be summed up by Oscar Piastri. The McLaren rookie won his first event in the Qatar sprint and yet he was all too quick to point out that it was not an actual race.

Option 2– Get the reserve drivers in

One of the biggest problems with drivers getting into Formula 1 is that there are only 20 seats on offer and with the existing teams reluctant to let another competitor in, that number is unlikely to increase anytime soon.

For a young driver, this means practice time is at an extreme premium. Teams can run a young driver in their car but the car in question has to be at least two years old which means if there is a big regulation change, like there was in 2022, young drivers are coming in cold turkey.

It is not like other sports either. A tennis player can compete to enter the grand slams, young footballers, rugby players or any other team sport may get 10 minutes at the end of a game to find their feet. Rookie or reserve drivers in F1 meanwhile are treated to two FP1 sessions if they are lucky.

Why not open the sprint up to them? Teams can designate a reserve or rookie driver to be their sprint competitor for the season meaning the likes of Liam Lawson would have been given a chance to compete earlier on in his career. It also opens doors for the likes of Mick Schumacher and Daniel Ricciardo who found themselves without a seat at the start of the year. If they can keep a toe in the water while looking for their next permanent seat that means they are more likely to hit the ground running when they do come back full time.

That arrangement would of course require careful planning especially in the case of someone like Lawson. His Super Formula commitments this year did not coincide with a sprint but they feasibly could in a different season, meaning Red Bull will have to weigh up what will help their youngster the best.

In terms of the weekend format, the regular F1 drivers could go back to how things were while the sprint would still take place on Saturday say with a one hour practice in the morning followed by 30 minutes qualifying and then the race in the afternoon. In terms of the cars, allow the teams to have a third car on sprint weekends meaning the regular drivers do not have to worry about their car being damaged.

PlanetF1.com recommends

Fastest F1 pit stops: McLaren top once again in Austin after Qatar world record

F1 records: The drivers with the longest points-scoring streaks in history

Option 3 – Get rid of them

Of course, the most natural solution for all F1 fans is to just get rid of them. Think back to before the word sprint had ever entered the Formula 1 lexicon and can you remember anyone crying out for a shortened race on the Saturday?

Say you went to a music concert, would you like to see the opening songs then a third of the big hits then all of the big hits? It would make no sense and certainly ruin the actual songs later on. Or maybe you go to a movie and halfway through, you see the first 20 minutes of the final act before being transported back to where you were.

Of course, the idea was created to get more people attending all three days in a weekend but that has not even taken place. COTA chairman Bobby Esptein said that having a sprint race “didn’t help” in selling Saturday tickets.

“You have to decide at what point are people coming for the event, which I think our fans are coming for the event, as much as they are for the sport,” he said, as per Autosport. “So, I think it still remains to be seen whether the sprint race is something the fans are embracing, or it’s more controversial.

“You’ve got people that are proponents of it and advocates, and you have others that say I like it the way it was. It’s still an experiment at this point.

“Why is Sunday still so strong if it’s the Max factor that affects the attendance? I’d say ‘well, I passed that test [in strong Sunday sales] and now I’m saying, part two is Saturday this year was a little bit less than Saturday last year, and yet we have a sprint race this year. So that’s the only thing that moved.”

So if sprints are making the sport worse and not even counteracting that with added revenue, why on earth would you keep them?

Read next:The Lewis Hamilton moment that demonstrated Max Verstappen’s evolution