Formula 1 is ready to take off the circuit of Baku after a long spring break.
The weekend promises to be full of many surprises: not only will the teams bring the first important updates of the season on their single-seaters, but there will also be the debut of the new format of the sprint weekend.
The Sprint had debuted in 2021 at the British Grand Prix to define the starting grid of Sunday’s GP. The new proposal provides that Friday morning will remain as always dedicated to free practice; in the afternoon instead, as in the last two years, will be held the qualifying that will define the starting grid of the Sunday Grand Prix.
While to define the starting order of the Sprint race on Saturday, a second qualifying session will be introduced, replacing the morning free practice session. Sprint’s scoring system remains the same, giving points to the top eight finishers.
The changes, that have already garnered a lot of support from the teams, will be officially voted on Tuesday, April 25, during the F1 Commission meeting.
Regarding the difficulty of calibrating the updates in a sprint weekend, during a media session after the Australian GP, it was asked to Andrea Stella how hard it can be to find a balance.
“If there is no anomalous behaviours then it is relatively easy, because in modern Formula 1 you have the data and you can read the aerodynamic performance through the forces that you measure and through the pressure map around the car that you measure to the dozens of the pressure sensors.
“So we are not too worried in assessing whether it is positive or not, unless there is some anomalies. But so far I have to say the cars have proven to be correlating well with the development so that’s why decided to introduce it even if it is a sprint race.”
Stella also expressed his favor of the format chance, showing his support towards the changes and believing it can bring some excitement to a F1 weekend.
“We support what the F1 are trying to achieve, we support making the Saturday even more exciting and more racing content compared to simply having the FP2 session where you have cars running around but actually we don’t think that’s a very useful session so we support it.”
Photo Credit: McLaren Racing
