[RahulNagaraj]

Sprint races in Formula 1 were introduced in 2021, wherein the traditional qualifying was shifted to Friday setting the grid for the 100 km Sprint Race on Saturday, which in turn determined the starting order for the main race on Sunday.

Now, Formula1 has made tweaks to the format, essentially making the Sprint Race a standalone feature - its results bearing no impact on the main race on Sunday.



As per the new Sprint weekend format, Fridays will now consist of an FP1 session and the regular qualifying session, which sets the grid for the main race on Sunday. Saturday will start off with an additional qualifying session called "Sprint Shootout", which sets the grid for the 100 km Sprint Race. The Sprint Shootout will have shorter durations, with SQ1 running for 12 minutes, SQ2 set for 10 minutes, and SQ3 being just 8 minutes long. Also, new tyres are mandatory for each phase, mediums for SQ1 and SQ2 and softs for SQ3.

Points for the Sprint race remain unchanged from last year - 8 points for the winner, 7 for second place and so on until eighth place, which gets 1 point. The points will be logged both to the driver and teams for their respective championships.

The new F1 Sprint weekend will be held across 6 Grand Prix weekends over the 2023 season. Apart from Azerbaijan, other Sprint venues include Austria (Red Bull Ring), Belgium (Spa-Francorchamps), Qatar (Lusail), USA (COTA) and Brazil (Interlagos).

Source: Formula1

Link to Team-BHP news

[chandrda]

Its Good as well as Bad -

Being standalone race, the drivers can push more in the sprint race and we may see more overtaking and risks taken for points. (but in reality, not sure how much they are going to push hard).

On the flip side - Drivers may really push hard(strategically) without thinking of the consequence of the main race. The no.2 driver of a team after having secured top 2 row start for the main race may try to be a bit more aggressive with the no.1 driver of the opposite team in the sprint race.

Lets see how this goes this weekend. Pain is we will have go through 2 qualifying races now

Regards

[ninjatalli]

This also puts a lot of strain on the engineers & support team. Earlier if a car crashed in qualifying, they would have less than 24 hours to rectify / repair the damage to get the car racing in the main race. However the probability of accidents would definitely go up in this new format - which is basically two qualifying sessions and two races over the same weekend.

Drivers have made their views quite public on this (e.g. Verstappen has made his displeasure on the Sprint races quite publicly). While they definitely are impacted; I'm sure we'll get to hear more feedback from other drivers and team principals over time.

[Turbohead]

I think F1 management is a very confused bunch.

While the sprint format makes sense, the budget cap is a direct conflict with it - how can the management expect the teams to race hard without worrying about overshooting the budget with increased wear and tear of the power train?

Honestly budget cap should be increased in order to bring in more development and racing.

[ds.raikkonen]

Originally Posted by RahulNagaraj

Attachment 2444428

Forget about the Sprint, what a snap of 'K-Mag' leading the 2022 Brazilian GP ahead of Verstappen

Pretty sure the Danes will use this photo and frame it on their walls

[StarrySky]

Originally Posted by chandrda

Being standalone race, the drivers can push more in the sprint race and we may see more overtaking and risks taken for points. (but in reality, not sure how much they are going to push hard).

I think the opposite. With the earlier format, overtaking in sprint race had two incentives - more points and better grid position for Sunday race. Now the grid for main race is set with its own quali, so the big incentive is taken away. There is not much to gain (only 1 point difference to the next higher position), almost nothing to gain if you are running towards the bottom end of the field, but potentially a lot to lose.

[sanjayrozario]

This is an overkill of racing. It not only puts unnecessary physical stress on the drivers, engineers & mechanics, but also mental stress on them. Plus some daft person used a crayon to draw the season on a globe. The circus is being made to criss-cross across continents as if they're playing IPL in a country. I love the good old FPs 1,2,3 followed by quali & racing. It makes me look forward to something each day of the weekend.

[bordeaux]

Man! This is hectic for fans as well. For f1, it's just more viewership, more ads, more dollars, pure business. Everything's data driven today. There is no pure sport or art today. Everything's been adjusted as per the analytics, sometimes in real time to churn out maximum dollars.

[Abhisheknott]

Every sporting body seems to thing that change is necessary. NBA changed the format for playoff qualification and is now looking at an in season tournament.
As Ninjatalli already mentioned this is going to put extra strain on the teams to take care of the vehicle and on the drivers to drive safe.
As a fan not for this as this is now 3 days for one race and in any case F1 is off TV this year.

[volkman10]

F1 Sprint format tweak agreed ahead of return for 2024 season.

For this year, the Sprint Shootout will move from Saturday to Friday, following an initial free practice session for track acclimatisation and set-up work.

The 100km Sprint will then take place on Saturday, ahead of qualifying for the Grand Prix later that day. The Grand Prix itself will remain on Sunday.

The regulatory refinements for these changes will be presented to the World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) on February 28.

Away from the Sprint, a proposal to increase the power unit allocation to four per driver for the 2024 and 2025 seasons was agreed.

Additionally, DRS activation for the race will be anticipated to one lap as opposed to two laps after the start of the race, or the re-start following a Safety Car.

Source: F1

[StarrySky]

I think the new format makes more sense. With the earlier format, there was the Sprint shootout + race on Saturday in between the qualifying on Friday for the main race and the GP on Sunday. Now at least, the Sprint part is done before we move to the main part of the weekend.

However, the 2023 format introduced some unpredictability because the qualifying for the Sunday race and corresponding setup was locked in after just one FP session. I think this particularly affected RB in some weekends. With the new format, the teams will have plenty of data to set up the car for qualifying and the race on Sunday.

[Thalla]

We saw mixed reaction from everyone about the sprint races but these races are likely to be a part of F1 for the next few years at least.