Drivers want the old sprint format back already
F1 News
Formula 1's first sprint weekend of '24 has only just finished, and the second will take place in Miami. As we know, there are positives and negatives of sprint races, and as of this season, the format has been changed. After the sprint qualifying on Friday, the sprint race then follows on Saturday morning. After the sprint, on Saturday afternoon, will there be qualifying for the Grand Prix.
Another important change is that after the sprint race, modifications can now be made to the cars. The Parc Fermé rules have thus become more flexible. Max Verstappen previously said that he preferred this, but now there are still drivers who would like to go back to the previous format. Valtteri Bottas is one of these drivers.
"I have to say, I actually probably preferred the old format myself because there was only one practice and the qualifying straight after was for the main race, so there's a bit more at stake, and as well as with a setup, you wouldn't have the second chance to adjust it, so I liked that a bit before what we had last year." said the Finn.
Lance Stroll feels the same: "We all agree. I think if I was just at anything, I would just prefer having a sprint quali and then having the GP quali the next morning. I don't think it's great having a sprint race where you're much slower than a qualifying lap and then straight to quali."
Difficult for mechanics, says Piastri
Oscar Piastri would also prefer to see the sprint race and qualifying for the Grand Prix reversed again. "I felt a little bit weird having the sprint race because it's obviously a race in itself, and then preparing again for qualifying kind of feels like the race should be, at the end of the day. I think opening up Parc Fermé was a good thing for the drivers and the engineers. I'm not sure the mechanics appreciated it that much, but I think to repeat some of the stuff that happened last year with Lewis and Charles getting disqualified, I think we don't want to see people getting disqualified because they set the ride heights a bit wrong and they can't change. I think that was a good step forward." said the McLaren driver.
Sergio Perez also sees an area for improvement: "I think one big point from Oscar about opening the Parc Fermé I think puts a lot of workload on the mechanics and I think it's something that we really have to look at. It's 24 weekends a season with these sprint races, I think it's a lot of load on our mechanics. So I think we look at it, change the format a bit to basically try to look after our people a little bit more as a sport, I think that's something really to look at."