by VALERIO BARRETTA
Verstappen, other attacks on the new F1
Recently the Red Bull team principal Christian Horner he said he liked Max Verstappen for his sincerity towards the current dynamics of Formula 1, which distinguishes him from that sea of ”PR” declarations. And the Dutchman immediately wanted to “confirm” his image as a “hard and pure” driver, once again attacking this Stars and Stripes Circus, which according to him seeks too much spectacle and little substance.
Verstappen's words
“What need is there for all this weirdness? Even I wonder what the rules are now. I'm feeling lostit's like a circus“, these are his words ad Auto Motor und Sport. “I hear about a qualifying format for the Sprint with only one lap available. I already don't like the current format with the medium-medium-soft tyres. We already don't know what to do. Just one quick lap? Or fast, slow, fast? It would be a very risky proposition“.
Even recently Verstappen has not held back, saying he felt like a clown in Las Vegas, surrounded by too much glamour, lots of show and little attention to the race. And thank goodness that F1 has not decided to hold a Sprint weekend in Nevada (which would be unachievable in 2023 considering the cars' debut on the Strip, but not to be ruled out in the future): “I've always said I understand the business side. But I see him as a pure rider. The Sprint takes away some of the magic: As a child, when I turned on the TV, I enthusiastically wondered what would happen in the race. As a fan, you don't have all the inside information on tire degradation or anything like that. You see a Red Bull, a Mercedes and a Ferrari on the starting grid and you wonder how it will end. A Sprint instead allows you to know what will happen more or less the next day, unless strange circumstances occur, such as a change in the weather. Usually you can judge the race pace after a Sprint, and I think this takes away the tension“.
The Parc Fermé issue
Among the aspects that are least understandable about modern F1 there is certainly the Park closed during a Sprint weekend. In these cases, the deadline for changing the set-up of the cars expires on Friday, before qualifying and even two days before the race, with only one free practice session behind us and the consequent difficulties in understanding the right setup for the race: “If you get it wrong you're trapped in that setup for the rest of the weekend. It's crap. It happened to us last year in Brazil. We've had a couple of good race weekends this year. However, I wasn't completely satisfied“.
The problem naturally affects all teams and not just Red Bull: “As for ride height in Austin, Mercedes and Ferrari certainly didn't lower their cars on purpose. But once you enter a wrong path, you can never get out. If you want to continue doing Sprints, from my point of view you need to make some changes. I would do one Parc Fermé for Saturday and another for Sunday“.
#Verstappen #circus #Parc #Fermé #Friday #disgusting
