Era already in the air for some time the hypothesis of modify somehow the structure of the race weekends that include the Sprint Racenow the rumors are becoming real and the innovations are concretely arriving on the track, at least according to what was claimed directly by Ferrari team principal Fredric Vasseur.
The next Formula 1 race will take place in Azerbaijan in late April and will provide the structure of the Sprint Racehowever this will be modified and will undergo a significant improvement in terms of entertainment compared to what we had seen in previous years. Prima in fact, Friday included a free practice session and a qualifying session (valid for the Sprint Race on Saturday); on Saturday a second free practice session was scheduled before the sprint race (whose result decided the starting order of Sunday’s race); the race was then held on Sunday.
Not things will change: there will then be aonly free practice session scheduled for Friday which will be followed on the same day by the actual qualifications for Sunday’s race. The Saturday instead it will have autonomous life and structure and will include a qualifying session in the morning valid for the sprint race scheduled for the same Saturday in the afternoon.
In this regard, the Scuderia Ferrari team principal specified:
“For once I think that all teams were lined up. It doesn’t happen very often. I like the format. I’m not a big fan of the usual FP2 (second free practice), sometimes it’s a bit boring… Trying to have something more dynamic during the weekend is a good decision. If you watch football you are not watching Wednesday’s session when they train at the stadium, and we are probably the only sport where we broadcast the training session on TV,” concluded Vasseur.
The other sprint races of this season will be in Austria, Belgium, Qatar, Austin and Brazil.