This year's Sprint races
The 2024 season will not involve any changes to the number of Sprint races on the calendar, introduced for the first time in 2021. Just like last year, the Sprint Shootout and Sprint Race events will remain sixand will take place in China (returning to the calendar after the Covid-19 epidemic), Miami, Austria, Austin, Brazil and Qatar. What will change, however, will be the weekend format.
The new format
While the only free practice session will take place on Friday morning, the Sprint Shootouti.e. the qualification that decides the deployment of the Sprint race, will be held this time on Friday afternoon. The race Sprintat the same time, it will be brought forward Saturday morning, with qualifying for the actual race returning permanently on Saturday afternoon. Consequently, the actual GP will take place on Sunday afternoon, with the only exceptions of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia scheduled for Saturday in respect of Ramadan.
More logical for Verstappen, but…
A change appreciated by the riders, also to allow the teams to be able to make changes on Saturday lunchtime with the reopening of parc fermé. The positive comment on this news came from Max Verstappenreigning world champion, even if the Dutchman still doesn't appreciate sprint races: “The change makes a little more sense, but it doesn't excite me to win a 'Sprint' or fight in this type of race – he explained to RaceFans – this format is better, before you were stuck and knew your weekend was ruined because you couldn't change anything. I'm sure he will help us now.”
Good for F1
The opinion of is decidedly more positive Pierre Gaslywith the Frenchman focusing in particular on a greater possibility of being able to make changes to the cars: “It's a big changeI think something was definitely missing – he added – last year we found ourselves having brilliant minds on Friday afternoon, while for the rest of the weekend we couldn't touch anything. It was a little sad not to be able to do that, other than a couple of things on the front wing, but I guess It's good for Formula 1 to give the engineers the chance to continue improving the cars between sessions“.
#Verstappen #Sprints #format #sense
