The pros and cons of F1's sprint qualifying format

The new format will be featured at three races this season — rumoured to be Silverstone, Monza and one non-European race, with changes to the race weekend and how the race grid is formulated. Here’s a look at how it works.

On those weekends, a practice session will be shunted out for the usual qualifying format on Friday. That sets the grid for 100km (62.1miles, or about half an hour) of sprint qualifying. The top three get points and that determines Sunday's grid for the main event.

But as with literally any change in sports, not everyone is happy. The format for qualifying used to be one hour, all cars on track whenever they want and fastest times set the grid. It often meant that the first 15 minutes were devoid of on-track action before some back-marker team would set times to get camera time for their sponsors. When that format changed to the three-step elimination we have now, even that was criticised.

So what are the pros and cons of the new system?

📺 A NEW TV FORMAT FOR FRIDAYS

Normally, Fridays are reserved for practice, with nothing but nerds tuning in to watch cars run around with aero-rakes and fluo-paint as teams use their valuable track time. Or some young driver gets a shot and racks up some mileage in the real thing.

With the new format, according to F1 themselves "The plan is to move the session later in the day, to make it easier for fans who are working to watch the session."

Silverstone. Early evening. Setting sun. Cars burning through Copse at 180mph. It already sells itself.

👊 RIVALRIES AND TIME

Sometimes, there aren't enough laps or TV time to expand rivalries and give space to go into greater depth into the drivers on the grid.

Take Imola, for example. George Russell vs Valtteri Bottas has some potential to become F1's version of 123Kid vs Razor Ramon, but with a couple of races a month, there isn't perhaps enough time to go into why a talented young back-marker is so angry at the champion's team-mate.

There's so much backstory potential that sprint qualifying could be explored with a short format race, and with fewer laps to get stuff done, maybe we're going to see rivalries intensify as drivers take more risks for track position on Sundays.

🏎 TYRE MANAGEMENT

The new races aren't going to be more than 30–35 minutes and pitstops aren't mandatory, there's no need for tyre management and instead of giving it their all for three laps in three different stints, cars can push the limits for 17–20 laps, showing their full potential.

In the Friday long-form qualifying on these weekends, drivers won't have to choose between compounds, being given five sets of soft tyres. For the top 10 runners, they also won't have to start the race on what they used in Q2, taking away a strategic decision.

"Silverstone. Early evening. Setting sun. Cars burning through Copse at 180mph. It already sells itself."

But not everything is positive. Although all 10 teams agreed on the format, there are risks involved for the teams on the grid.

💥 CRASH RISK

Take the aftermath of the Bottas-Russell incident. Imagine that happening in sprint qualification. F1 engineers consistently work miracles to get cars ready for Sunday, but that smash up, for example, would be a lot of work. Here's what Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said after the incident.

"The whole situation is absolutely not amusing for us, to be honest. It's quite a big shunt. Our car is a write-off, in a cost cap environment that is certainly not what we needed and probably it's going to limit upgrades that we are able to do."

If a team writes off a car on the Saturday sprint race, how are they going to compete on Sunday?

💨 DRS STAYS THE SAME

The rear-wing flap has changed the overtaking game for F1. If you're within one second of a car in front on a certain part of the track, you get less drag, more speed and an overtaking opportunity. Here's an example from last year's Yas Marina race between Alex Albon and Lando Norris.

But in a sprint race, it would have been interesting to expand the experiment and perhaps add 0.5–1 second to the DRS window, or extend the distance it can be used. Or to go totally left-field, have a lap where DRS can be used anywhere on the track, bringing an extra element of risk and driver skill.

Formula 1 could have used the new format to refine DRS further and make it even more exciting, and I understand the importance of keeping things consistent for fans, but it does feel like there's a missed opportunity here.

🕒 CONSISTENCY MATTERS MORE THAN EVER

In normal qualifying, teams can get through to the next stage by being quicker than a handful of rivals over one quick lap. Teams can plan in Q2 or Q3 and sometimes not make decisions to run and preserve their precious tyres, for example.

But in a sprint race, teams have to do it for 17–20 laps. There's no device in the rules that would allow smaller teams to get closer to the front of the grid against the bigger teams and there's a risk that this format will just exacerbate the margins between the haves and have nots.

Reverse grids, whether full or partial, could have helped here - imagine Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen starting in the fastest cars from row 10 of a 20-lap shootout? It's a video game scenario in real life and would add guaranteed drama to a race weekend.

You could argue and say that consistency should be rewarded, but like Carlos Sainz at the start of Portimão in 2020, those freak laps are what makes the sport exciting to fans.

📚 CAN YOU TELL A STORY IN A SPRINT?

F1 is a sport about storytelling, with 20 very different drivers converging to race the fastest cars across different venues across the world and at the end, Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen take the chequered flag.

But when a non-fancied driver like Pierre Gasly or Sergio Perez wins, it means more. Sprint qualifying is trying to add a chapter to that story and pack in an entire weekend into 30 minutes. It could be amazing, and it's worth a trial, but I'd be surprised if this ends up as the final format in 2022 and beyond.

Photo by George Bale on Unsplash