The 2021 Formula 1 season will go down in history for the introduction of the Sprint Races – or more precisely Sprint Qualifying – on Saturday afternoon. A laborious idea that led FIA and Liberty Media to make a revolution of a sedimented, monolithic, apparently immutable format. It was useful to overcome the reluctance of the teams, which have opposed by a large majority for at least two years. Then the arrival of the pandemic and the subsequent financial crisis gave the decisive push to test the format which will be limited, in the first instance, to only three races out of a total of twenty-three events in 2021. The Sprint Qualifying will obviously offer unprecedented challenges to the teams who will have to rethink and remodel the entire race weekend by adapting to the new technical variables.
There will be more preparation work on the event. There will certainly be a lot more simulation work to understand how the various scenarios could unfold and how a sprint race could affect the way things flow. Teams will have a very early qualifying and will therefore have only one hour to prepare for it in the best possible way. The anomaly will be not being able to test the car at its best with high levels of fuel load. Nor will it be possible to perfectly understand the tires under maximum load conditions. From a technical point of view, it is about preparation, simulation and intelligent use of the little time available. On this front, every team will have to learn and those who do it first will have an advantage.
Specifically, teams feel confident enough to have put in place all the procedures to be more than ready for the Silverstone GP which marks the debut of the unprecedented race format. Engineers have already implemented simulations of models to try to get an idea of how things will go. In terms of preparing the car, not much changes except to think about how teams will adapt quickly to a different GP format.
The challenge is therefore more organizational-logistic than technical.
The sprint Qualifying, which will award points to the top three, will not be just a sort of aesthetic way to increase television contacts and therefore revenues. It will also be a way to recalibrate the general approach to races by trying to mix up the values on the field to generate events that are less obvious regarding the final result and more fought on track. These are the proposals of Stefano Domenicali and the group he represents. A few more weeks and we will know if Liberty Media has made a good decision.
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