As today’s sprint and a couple others this season show, the sprint can be a good show. The shorter duration reduces the effects of tire degradation on the racing, keeps the field bunched up and makes for more passing and extended duels, instead of on the full-length race where teams are playing a longer strategy game rather than fighting to hold position on the track, and smaller performance differences between the cars accumulate over time to spread the field out.
However, I think F1 needs to either make changes to maintain that level of intensity throughout the longer race distance (i.e., longer lasting tires that won’t melt from agressive attacking or defending maneuvers, allow refueling to reduce weight at the start of the race, tighten up the rules more towards a spec series to keep car performance closer together) or accept that F1 is a different kind of racing from NASCAR or IndyCar, with a more tactical and cerebral presentation. Teams don’t particularly like the sprint format and it takes away from the quality of the main event due to lost practice sessions.
I hope F1 never gets close to being a spec series (there are tight regulations obviously, but not many parts are spec. A big part of F1, for me at least, is car development.
Fia going to keep trying to make this thing work, but there really isn’t a good time for squeezing in more racing. If they move sprint race to Saturday before, and something happens that prevents teams from running qualifying, there will be hell complaints .
Okay, here’s a crackpot idea I’ve been thinking about.
Quali for the sprint on Friday.
Practice Saturday AM Sprint Saturday afternoon, but it’s not a race. Your quali sets your order to go out for 1 lap qualifying (fastest goes last) which sets Sunday’s grid Sunday GP
It’s rooted in my opinion that the only good part of the sprint is the extra quali session, which has been pretty exciting and turns into a 1 lap session in SQ3 anyway. It isn’t 2 races, but it’s action all 3 days
