Jenson Button on sprint races: "Love it"
General
- GPblog.com
The 2022 calendar for Formula 1 was unveiled last week, but it has not yet been confirmed how many sprint races and at which circuits they will be held. Presumably six of the 23 Grand Prix weekends next season will include sprint racing. Jenson Button is happy about that.
“I know a few people thought it was a little weird doing the sprint races, [but] I love it. I think it mixes it up, and it's mixing it up for the drivers, but also for the engineers and strategists," said Button, who believes the new concept presents new challenges for drivers and teams.
Indeed, the F1 analyst told Sky Sports: "It's a very different weekend when you have a sprint race on a Saturday. I like it, I love qualifying on a Friday because it means that the guys have less time to practice – they have one hour before they go into qualifying instead of three hours."
According to Button, it allows for more surprises. "So it definitely mixes qualifying up a bit, and that sprint race on certain tracks is going to be really exciting – not on all tracks, but on certain tracks, it'll be great.”
Struggle over 2022 budget cap due to sprint races
The top teams want the current $145m budget cap to remain in place, whereas it was planned to drop to a maximum of $140m per season in 2022. Teams like Red Bull Racing think the sprint races would be too expensive, while the smaller teams are happy to settle for five million dollars less.