The sprint format will make its debut in next weekend’s British Grand Prix, before also being trialled at two other grands prix later in the 2021 Formula 1 season.
It will entail the usual Friday afternoon practice being replaced with a qualifying session that will then set the grid for a 100km Saturday race dubbed ‘F1 Sprint’ – the results of which will then translate into the starting order for the main event on Sunday.
The sprint race trial is a culmination of a long-lasting push by Formula 1’s chiefs for a shorter Saturday race, which was initially intended to use a reversed grid before this was effectively blocked by team opposition, led by Mercedes.
Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc shares his thoughts on the new Formula 1 sprint format that will be tested in the 2021 British Grand Prix at Silverstone: We will only have one free practice session and then straight to qualifying. This is something I like personally, because there is less time to study before qualifying, so you might make a bigger difference than now. For the sprint qualifying [race], I think one good thing about it is that we will finally be able to push those cars for a whole race, 100 kilometres, to the maximum. This might be nice for us drivers.” – Charles explained.
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