What are we hearing now? F1 comes with a new weekend format including Sprint Shootout.
Never change a winning team. Or in other words: don’t adjust something if it works. In Formula 1 they think differently. The F1 is incredibly popular at the moment, but they are still adjusting the format. Why? Because there is always room for improvement and to keep viewers interested. It’s up to you to determine whether this will work.
Sprint Shootouts in F1
The so-called F1 Commission voted nicely democratically unanimously with the change. It now officially comes with the ‘Sprint Shootout’. Hey, huh, what’s that then? It means that the structure of the sprint weekend will be completely overhauled. Instead of two free practice sessions (often boring for the viewer), there will soon be only one practice session and an extra qualifying session will be held on Saturday. This will be the case next weekend.
The qualification is considerably shorter than a regular qualification and will therefore be called Sprint Shootout. The Shootout determines the starting grid for the sprint and is therefore a qualification, but with a twist. Shorter sessions are used: SQ1 takes 12 minutes, SQ2 takes 10 minutes and SQ3 only takes 8 minutes.
The teams are under higher pressure, because mistakes are punished mercilessly. And this can affect their result. All this should make it more exciting, so that more people will watch it.
Scheme
All this changes the schedule and looks like this:
- Friday – First free practice, followed by qualifying for the Grand Prix on Sunday. This is the standard qualification;
- Saturday – Qualifying for the Sprint Race, the Sprint Shootout, next is the Sprint Race;
- Sunday – The Grand Prix. Fortunately nothing has changed.
There are also new rules regarding tires. In SQ1 and SQ2 the drivers ride on one set of mediums and in SQ3 on a set of softs.
However, Max Verstappen was not such a fan of the sprint races, I wonder what he thinks about the Shootouts…
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