Red Bull Racing Dutch driver Max Verstappen has repeatedly expressed his disapproval for the Sprint race format, but his opinion was not shared by Scuderia Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc – or Haas driver Kevin Magnussen. The three drivers were asked about the Sprint weekends ahead of the Brazilian Grand Prix, which will be the third and final event based on the Sprint format. The double F1 world champion feels that races are boring leading from the front and that drivers don’t want to take too many risks given the fact that only a few points are awarded for the top spots.
The Dutchman proved to be the most successful sprint racer in Formula 1 so far: from the five such events that have taken place so far, the Red Bull man won three of them, but it seems that this type of format is more popular among other drivers such as Charles Leclerc and Kevin Magnussen, who both confirmed ahead of the Interlagos race that they liked the shorter practice time before qualifying
“I’m just not a big fan of it.” – Max Verstappen once again said, during Thursday’s press conference – “I feel like we don’t really race, there are a few points that you get but you also know that you can’t really risk it because the main race is where you really get the points.” – he added.
This weekend’s race will be the sixth Formula One sprint race, the third of the current season, after Formula 1 tested them last year. For 2023 there will be six race weekends based on the Sprint format.
This year’s Imola Grand Prix featured the best sprint race so far: at that stage, the F1-75 car was much closer in terms of race pace to the Red Bull RB18 and Charles Leclerc was able to battle Max Verstappen, even though the Monegasque eventually had to settle for P2, despite overtaking his rival at the start.
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“Yeah I like the Friday. Especially because normally it’s a bit of a boring Friday on normal race weekends, you’ve got FP1, FP2 and you do many laps for not much but now on sprint weekend you need to be straight away on it in FP1 and then you’ve got qualifying straight away so that I enjoy.” – the Scuderia Ferrari driver explained in Sao Paulo.
Danish driver Kevin Magnussen agreed with Charles Leclerc and said that the Sprint Race weekends are in fact better than the usual format with two free practice sessions on Friday, which have no real value for most of the fans:
“Yeah it must be really boring,” Kevin Magnussen replied, when the media asked about Max Verstappen‘s comments regarding the fact that the sprint races are not very interesting for the drivers at the front – “I kind of like it, Max has a good point that the risk that you want to take in the sprint is less because it decides the position for Sunday so I think maybe a good tweak could be to separate that so you can go for it. I do enjoy going from Practice 1 straight into Qualifying as well because as Max says, it puts a lot of pressure on to find the rhythm quickly and get the setup right because I think that when there’s three practices it’s quite a lot, so anyway I kinda like it.” – Kevin Magnussen explained.
One aspect which most of the drivers agree on is the lack of practice running on Friday. Based on the Sprint format, only two practice sessions are available for drivers, and just one before the important running takes place on Friday with the begins with the qualifying session.
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