Did São Paulo Cure Sprint Format Fatigue?
Whether you love ‘em, hate ‘em or just tolerate ‘em, you can’t deny that sprints shined in Brazil
The São Paulo Grand Prix brought the unexpected. After gusts of wind tore off the grandstand overhead covering and sheets of rain pelted crowds following Friday’s qualifying session, Saturday had sunshine and a show in store for fans.
In a flurry of action and back-and-forth position grabbing, Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) and Pierre Gasly (Alpine) duked it out on lap 14 after Oscar Piastri (McLaren) swooped around Daniel Ricciardo (AlphaTauri) in a swift and merciless leap forward. While Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri) had his day in the sun by overtaking Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes to snatch sixth place and Ricciardo eventually took back ninth, there was one driver who stood out from the rest.
Sergio Perez (Red Bull) battled Hamilton on lap four, George Russell (Mercedes) on lap eight, Ricciardo and Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) on lap 12 and sprinted across the black and white checkered flag to reclaim his third-place starting position.
“This is racing,” Jolyon Palmer, former F1 driver and current F1TV commentator, said mid-sprint. “How has none of this ended in tears yet?”
Maybe it was missing out on his home race after an early trip to the garages in Mexico City that led Perez to pick up the pace. Maybe it was Ricciardo, a fan-favorite to take Perez’s Red Bull seat, out-qualifying and out-scoring the Guadalajara-born driver in an AlphaTauri. Or maybe it was the critics calling for his retirement that finally did him in. Whatever it was, Perez went for the gap in Brazil.
The 24-lap race was a standout among the five other sprints this season, featuring tire wear and tear that is typically absent from the succinct driving stints.
The sprint race weekend format — featuring a sprint shootout qualifying and a miniature race on Saturday — was introduced in 2021 to give spectators an extra event squeezed into an already jam-packed schedule. However, F1’s six sprints throughout the 2023 season have garnered backlash from fans, drivers and team principals alike.
Previous sprints this year have served as little more than a bite-sized snippet of Sunday’s race. A highlight reel for viewers who may not have two hours to sit and watch come race day, the sprint format is routine and repetitive.
At the United States Grand Prix in late October, the sprint podium finishers weren’t too different from Sunday’s champagne-sprayers. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, as predicted, came out on top followed by Hamilton. Lando Norris (McLaren) fell short of a podium in the sprint race, settling for fourth, but managed to snag the third podium step on Sunday.
Qatar had some unsuspecting action in store as McLaren’s rookie driver, Piastri, took one of six sprint wins away from Verstappen with Norris joining the two on the podium in third. Both Saturday and Sunday’s race trophies went to the same three drivers — just in a jumbled order. Piastri claimed second in Sunday’s race, sandwiched between Verstappen in first and Norris in third.
In Azerbaijan, Austria and Belgium, the top podium step featured the same driver.
The sprint results reflect a flawed format.
“It takes away that magic of waking up on a Sunday,” Verstappen said in Austin. “You turn on the TV and you’ve had qualifying but you’re not sure which car is going to be quickest [on Sunday].”
There is a certain rhythm to race weekends. Sprints interrupt that tune. With qualifying for Sunday’s race taking place on Friday, the order begins to muddle, and viewers are left asking, “Who is starting on pole, again?”
Traditionalists bemoan the tweaks to the sport and have been the most fervent torch-wielders leading the old-guard mob. From the shortened races lacking in tire strategy — no pitstops or tire changes are required in sprint races — to driver practice sessions cut down to a third of a normal race weekend, the extra race presents more problems than profit.
However, Brazil proved that sprints may be of more interest to die-hard race fans than previously expected. Rather than appealing to spectators passing by for a photo-op or pit stop of interest in the sport, sprints like São Paulo should be favorites among longtime fans who relish close, competitive racing.
But not all sprint races are created equally. São Paulo’s sprint may have been wheel-to-wheel, but so was the main event with a photo finish between Perez and Alonso. Sprints seem to be only as high-energy and seat-gripping as the track allows.
So, should F1 scrap sprints all together? Not quite.
Red Bull’s Team Principal, Christian Horner, has heavily critiqued the format but still sees room for an additional event.
“It’s got to mean something,” Horner said in a post-sprint interview with SkySports. “It’s got to be more of an event in itself rather than an extended long run with a medal at the end.”
Horner suggested a separate competition with larger cash prizes — like European football cup competitions — that would lead to an extra push in competitiveness and, therefore, make Saturdays a bit more entertaining.
However, sprints have already come under fire from drivers because of their function as a cash grab.
“I like racing. I’m a pure racer,” Verstappen said. “I think this is more for the show, and of course, it is important to have entertainment, but I think if all the cars are closer, you create… better entertainment.”
Plus, a larger pot of money isn’t likely to motivate a team that is valued at $2.6 billion to throw the car around for a sprint podium and risk performance in the main event.
“Everyone is super careful anyway because if you are fighting for third and you have a little touch and drop back to last, you know your race on Sunday is going to be pretty tough, so probably you are not going to risk it,” Norris said last year when asked about the sprint format. “That is not what a race should be about.”
If Liberty Media wants a show, shuffling the starting order would be a surefire way to entertain both those watching at home and the drivers.
F1 Academy, the all-women racing series, features three races in a typical weekend. To prevent becoming redundant, the second race reverses the top eight qualifiers. The driver in eighth place starts from pole position while the quickest qualifier must battle back to the top from eighth.
Other formats could stem from Formula E, F1’s all-electric counterpart, and shake up the shootout. The battery-powered series has cycled through numerous qualifying set-ups in its brief nine-year lifespan. Currently, Formula E’s knockout qualifying format offers a one-on-one fight for a starting position that sees two drivers take the track for 10 minutes in an attempt to out-pace the other. Like a March Madness bracket, the fastest driver moves on to the next round.
This format could also solve F1’s impeding issues that have repeatedly plagued qualifying sessions, ruining drivers’ lap times and sending others tumbling down the starting order with penalties.
F1’s status as a non-spec engineering competition with performance ranging from the dominant Red Bulls to the underperforming AlphaTauris and Alfa Romeos could complicate the adoption of formats from series with a more even playing field.
However, the reformatting risk has paid off for both F1 Academy and Formula E.
F1 Academy had nine different winners and eleven podium finishers out of 15 drivers across the debut season. Twelve different Formula E drivers graced the podium in the 2022-2023 season. While the electric series’ viewership skyrocketed past NASCAR to become the fourth most viewed motorsport, F1 is rapidly losing viewers.
The Miami Grand Prix’s ABC viewership plummeted by 25% this year amid Verstappen’s record-breaking but repetitive win streak. With the world champion winning 83% of the sprints, going back to the drawing board seems necessary to mix things up.
F1 is no stranger to doing so. The racing series has tested various qualifying formats in its nearly 80-year history that could be reintroduced to spice up sprint shootouts. From the one-hour qualifying round starting in 1996 to the short-lived one-lap qualifying session in 2003, learning from its history could be the middle ground F1 is looking for to boost the sport’s wow factor.
Whether it be a bigger money pot, a sliced-and-diced starting grid, a cut to the number of sprint races or a combination of all three, the winter break may have big things in store for next season’s sprints.
Maybe the solution lies in letting Brazil bask in its sprint glory and laying the other races to rest.
Photo courtesy of Michael Potts/BSR Agency/Getty Images