Crowned champion for a world now, Max Verstappen continues with the trend he set from the beginning of the season and will continue sticking to it until the championship closes in Ab Dhabi at the end of this month. The Dutchman, who has within his reach a total of 19 victories, a record that would be difficult to match, won on Sundays and for a couple of years he also started to do so on Saturdays, during the sprint races that were introduced in 2021. In Interlagos, the three-time world champion claimed his fourth victory in these events that serve as an appetizer, this time more than ever if we take into account the uproar that was formed by the very high degradation of the tires, which wreaked havoc on most . ‘Mad Max’ won the first corner against Lando Norris (second) thanks to a brilliant start – his reaction time to the traffic lights was one and a half tenths –, while Checo Pérez finished third. Carlos Sainz crossed the finish line eighth, and Fernando Alonso, eleventh, in one of the busiest events on the calendar.
With the entry into the scene of the new weekend format, the promoters of the contest tried to shake up the most loyal fans a little and attract new audiences. The three events with short tests of the first year became six with a view to the next one (2022) and 2023, when, in addition, the agenda was revised. This year, Saturday’s day focused entirely on sprints, with a specific timed session in the morning. Furthermore, the afternoon result stopped having influence on Sunday, a circumstance that has led the runners to take more risks, given that contacts or possible accidents penalize much more than before.
The teams, however, regretted having only one free practice session, the first on Friday, before the long qualifying session, the one in the afternoon, which establishes the starting order for Sunday. But, above all, their complaints revolved around the prohibition of touching the cars after that first contact, due to the introduction of parc ferme conditions. That will change in 2024, with the pretext of avoiding confusion among the fans, even though the modifications are still at a debate table with all the parties involved.
The issue has gained importance in recent days, following the disqualifications of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc in Austin, due to an irregularity in their cars that the stewards detected after the race at the Circuit of the Americas. The flat bottom board of the British’s Mercedes and the Monegasque’s Ferrari did not reach the minimum thickness, apparently due to the degradation to which the floor of their cars was subjected. Engineers consider that this incident would be avoidable with the relaxation of this limitation on touching the cars. One of the proposals being considered is to reschedule the qualifying training for the sprint to Friday, and leave the conventional timing for Saturday, as it had always been held. That would allow the technicians to work on the prototypes before that training, the most decisive of all.
“The idea of the sprints arose by and for the followers. From a technical point of view it is a headache because the car enters the parc ferme after just one practice session. And that makes it very difficult for us,” says Tom McCullough, head of performance at Aston Martin, from Brazil. “We have been talking to Stefano [Domenicali, CEO de la F1]. The sprint qualifying could be done on Friday, and then the second qualifying, for the race, on Saturday at two, which is its usual schedule. That would probably create less confusion,” agreed Toto Wolff, head of Mercedes, before the microphones of Sky Sports.
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