Horner wants action from FIA: 'That's a travesty'
F1 News
- Ludo van Denderen
For a change, there is a 'normal' race weekend in Mexico for F1 drivers. No sprint race or experimental qualifying format; just three free practice sessions, a qualifying session and the Mexican Grand Prix on Sunday as the highlight. Last week in the United States, there was a sprint race (won by Max Verstappen). A positive result for Red Bull Racing, then, but even so, team boss Christian Horner is not an unqualified supporter of the current sprint weekend set-up.
Last week it was revealed Formula 1 is looking into how to make sprint racing more attractive. Abolish - as Verstappen would prefer - Horner does not want to abolish Sprint directly. However, he does think that adjustments can be made here and there to the rules. The most important change, if it were up to the Red Bull team boss? "I mean, for me, Parc Ferme is a bit of a joke. You know, you get one session to set your car up and then, I mean, the engineers may as well go home at that point. So, you know, that needs looking at," Horner believes.
'Ferrari and Mercedes the dupe'
In Austin, there was that one hour where teams had to determine the set-up for the entire weekend, as nothing was allowed to be changed after qualifying on Friday afternoon. One small mistake in the setup could ruin your whole weekend. "And that, I'm sure, was a contributing factor to the ride height issues at the teams that fell foul of the regulations."
Moreover, Horner wonders why there is such a fuss about making adjustments after the sprint race on Saturday. "And, you know, effectively, it's just a long run on a sprint race. And there's no real jeopardy to it. There's no real incentive behind it. And I think it just needs to be looked at and modified to say, okay, how can it be improved? How can we make this better? How can it be more satisfying for the drivers? And if the drivers enjoy it and find it rewarding and the teams find it rewarding, then I think the fans ultimately will," Horner said.