Verstappen, Hamilton and Perez prefer new format: 'It's better than before'
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Max Verstappen has never been a big fan of sprint races in Formula 1. However, the Red Bull Racing driver admits that he thinks the new format works a lot better than the old one. He therefore enjoyed the first sprint race of the year in China more than previous ones. Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez are also in favour of the new sprint format.
Verstappen is more positive about the new sprint format
The new sprint format involves one free practice session on Friday, followed by sprint qualifying. The sprint race will then be run on Saturday, followed by qualifying for the Grand Prix. Between the sprint race and qualifying, adjustments to the cars' set-up are allowed again, where previously they were not allowed after the first free practice during a sprint weekend.
Verstappen has never made it a secret of the fact that he would rather get rid of the sprint weekends, but he does see the new format as an improvement. "I do think that the format is a bit better than what we used to have. So in that sense, I definitely enjoyed it a bit more," he said after the sprint race.
Hamilton favours lasting changes to F1 weekends
Lewis Hamilton, unlike Max Verstappen, has always been in favour of the sprint format but recognises areas for improvement. "I've always generally enjoyed the sprint format. There’s a lot of time wasted on these weekends, and we could either shorten the weekends or pack the days more so that the fans have more of an experience. There are literally hours and hours and hours, like at least 10 hours wasted during the day where we could be entertaining the fans on track," explained the Mercedes driver.
He continued: "Sustainability has to come into that. Also with the ability to be able to make a change right now to potentially try and close the gap to the Red Bulls, or at least whoever's up ahead of us tomorrow, I think is great for the race weekend. But before, if you were just stuck in it right now, you would already know, absolutely know the end race result. But today we've got something new and exciting."
Perez is happy with the sprint format adjustment
Sergio Perez concurs. "I think we can improve the timing. Like Lewis says, I think there's a lot of time wasted during the days and the weekend, so there's something to improve. I don't really like the fact that you can change your car from now on because I felt like sometimes on the sprint weekends, it will leave you vulnerable if you don't make the right decisions and stuff like that. So now it kind of gives the teams a little bit more time to extract the maximum," said the Red Bull driver.