The Sprint Race was rejected for the second time, although Chase Carey wants to keep the idea alive and does not seem willing to put it back in the drawer of unspoken wishes. The FIA has made the F1 calendar official, making the first eight races in Europe known: there are two double events on the list, spaced a week apart.
In Austria and Great Britain we will see two GPs lined up: there is more than one hidden doubt that the results from the first weekened will then be repeated in a “photocopy” just seven days later. And for this reason the idea of experimenting with the Sprint Race was born which would replace the qualifying with a race whose line-up would be composed by the inversion of the grid of the drivers’ championship standings.
Mercedes and Racing Point got in the way (the Stroll team put themselves under Toto Wolff’s orders) so that the measure which had to be approved unanimously by the teams did not pass to the last Sporting Working Group.
And now alternative proposals are being considered to make the results of the double races less predictable. Among the solutions designed there is also that of differentiating the choice of tires between race 1 and race 2, taking into account that the allocation of the 13 trains of tires per event is not left to the free choice of the teams, but is decided by Pirelli.
At the Red Bull Ring from 3 to 5 July we will see C2, C3 and C4 running, while the following week softer compounds could be seen in action: C3, C4 and C5. In Silverstone the sequence of C1, C2 and C3 of race 1 could be diversified into C2, C3 and C4. But will different compounds be enough to change the cards on the table?
Leave a Reply