It was another dominant day for Max Verstappen in the 2023 F1 season as he took pole and won on sprint Saturday at Circuit of the Americas ahead of tomorrow’s United States Grand Prix.
Photo credit: Red Bull Content Pool
The Dutchman once again didn’t hide his displeasure at the fact F1 has a sprint format at six rounds during a season.
Ironically he redeemed himself on sprint day following his error at turn 1 in Q3 that saw him having to overdrive and exceed track limits at turn 19. The lap time deletion leaves him starting P6 on Sunday.
But in the post-sprint press conference, the three-time defending World Champion spoke about the lack of enjoyment he feels from having to do two qualifying sessions over the course of a weekend.
“Love it. It’s fantastic!” was Verstappen’s sarcastic response initially to sprints before going into more detail.
“If you want my honest opinion about the sprint weekends, I don’t really get excited by it. I just feel like once you’ve completed qualifying, you’re a bit lost.
“I feel like we only need one qualifying in the weekend where you really put everything on the line and it feels great.
“This morning, you put it on P1, but I’m like, ‘this is Saturday, it’s not many points anyway for the race’.”
Verstappen also spoke about how it takes the shine off the main event for fans as everyone now knows who is looking strong and weak over a full race distance because of a race stint that the sprint brings.
The excellent race pace of Verstappen was no surprise, but there was very strong speed from Lando Norris — on a track McLaren expected to struggle a bit more with compared to Japan and Qatar — and the Williams of Alex Albon. If they are that rapid again tomorrow, the element of surprise will be gone.
“Now we’ve done this race, everyone more or less knows what’s going to happen tomorrow between all the cars in terms of pace. So it takes a bit of the excitement away from it.
“If you wouldn’t have done today and we only had that qualifying that we had yesterday, you don’t really know what’s going to happen before the race so everyone is very excited turning on the TV because you don’t know, and also we didn’t know. Now we know a little bit.
“If I would be a fan I would just be disappointed because you more or less know the picture, if nothing crazy happens you know what’s going to happen tomorrow.
“So it takes away that magic of waking up on a Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon and you turn on the TV and you have qualifying but you’re not sure which car is going to be quickest, in most of the years. It takes that magic away, I find.”
