Key ingredient for Sprint Qualifying races is “less track time” – Masi

2021 Portuguese Grand Prix

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Formula 1’s new Sprint Qualifying race weekends will produce more exciting action because teams will have less time to prepare, says race director Michael Masi.

The series approved the new format for introduction earlier this week. Silverstone will host the first of three Sprint Qualifying weekends at the British Grand Prix in July.

Under the new format, a normal qualifying session will be held on Friday in place of second practice. This will set the starting order for a 100 kilometre race on Saturday, which will take place after a second practice session. This Sprint Qualifying race will decide the grid for the grand prix.

In a year when practice has been reduced by an hour at every race, teams will lose a further hour of running during Sprint Qualifying weekends, and have just 60 minutes of practice before qualifying on Friday. Masi said this is one of the most important aspects of the new format.

Sprint Qualifying shows all parties worked together, says Masi
“The new format will be something a little bit different because there will be less track time for the teams leading up to qualifying,” he said. “So that’s one element that will have an area of teams possibly not being as well prepared or refined as they would be normal qualifying.

“And then having that excitement of a Sprint Qualifying race start on Saturday, which is something we haven’t seen in Formula 1. And then the progression from there into the grand prix on Sunday, I think we’ll add just a different element strategically from the teams’ end in particular.”

Masi said the new format was an example of the FIA working successfully with Formula 1, the teams and drivers. “F1, the FIA, the teams and drivers all work together very much for the benefit of Formula 1,” he said. “That happens at each and every event.”

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“A prime example of that has been the collaboration in developing the sprint qualifying regulations,” Masi added. “It’s an exciting initiative for the sport to trial a different and new format and something that we’ve all worked together on to achieve the best outcome.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Autodromo do Algarve, 2021
Hamilton wasn’t familiar with the new format
“I’m really looking forward to the first event where Sprint Qualifying takes place just to see a completely different format in an F1 world and how everyone adapts to that.”

However Lewis Hamilton was unfamiliar with the plans when asked about them yesterday. “Honestly, I don’t really know much about it,” he said. “I don’t really know anything about it.”

The seven-times champion has previously called on F1 to vary its event structure at different venues. “I’ve always said that we need to have some sort of different format at certain races through the year,” he said. “There are some tracks, particularly places like Monaco for example, which is beautiful to be at but it’s it’s not an exciting race necessarily.

“So I like that they’re being open-minded, they’re making changes, and I think from those experimental kind of weekends, I think hopefully the sport will learn lots on how we can deploy better races moving forwards.”

Silverstone managing director Stuart Pringle praised F1’s innovation, which will also be used at the Italian Grand Prix and one further round this year.

“We are incredibly excited that Silverstone fans will be the first to experience the Formula 1 sprint qualifying format at this year’s British Grand Prix,” he said.

“We have not seen such a major timetable shake up in the sport for years and I appreciate the continued efforts being made by Formula 1 and the FIA to enhance the entertainment on track giving our spectators even more to look forward to this July.”

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29 comments on “Key ingredient for Sprint Qualifying races is “less track time” – Masi”

  1. I still find it rather unbelievable that they are going to give points for the three qualifying races. Now, 3rd grid position at Silverstone, Monza, and Interlagos is way more valuable than pole position in Monaco or elsewhere. World championship titles had been won and lost by one point in the past…

  2. Can someone tell me, who will be recorded as being on Pole Position (for the purposes of statistics for example). Is it the person that qualifies 1st on Friday, or the winner of the Sprint ‘qualifying’ (race) on Saturday? Thanks.

    1. That is where the best statisticians come in, who differentiate between Fastest Qualifying Lap (in this case Friday time) and Pole Position (Saturday result). In fact, I only know one such statistician :-) http://www.gpfactsandnumbers.com/statistics/

    2. @john-h I would suggest it is the pole winner for the race, that being the pole winner on Saturday as usual, who is determined during Saturday’s Sprint Qualifying of course.

      1. I initially thought that too @robbie, but it would mean effectively pole position AND 3 points for the sprint race win. I presume that will still be the case, but all this is so silly isn’t it.
        Indeed Ales, let’s see what he/she makes of it! Tinkering with this kind of thing isn’t correct imho.

        1. @John-H The he/she is me…so I have already decided. This is not completely dissimilar to 2003-04 qualifying rule, actually.

          1. Ah ok!!! Lol. Love your work :)

        2. @john-h I think it is only silly if one wants to make it so. A different format has been tried many times and it has always determined the pole winner. That it now has 3 points attached to it isn’t that hard to figure out. Any harder than offering a fast lap point that sometimes goes to someone who pits for tires near the end especially for that point? Is anyone dwelling on the fact that the ‘only’ reason LH is leading the WDC right now is his fastest lap point? Not that I’m aware because we take all circumstances into account throughout a season, no? All points up for grabs by all (who have reasonably competitive cars of course):)

  3. I haven’t checked it and I don’t remember reading about it, but I was wondering during FP1 just now: what tires will the drivers start on during the SQ and the normal race? Does the Q2 rule still apply for one of the races?

      1. Thank you!

      2. Several reports had indicated
        – Practice 1 and 2 … free choice
        – Friday Qualifying … Soft. 5 sets permitted for use, but only one in Q3
        – Sprint Race … Free choice on compounds. No need to save any for future use. No requirement for a pit stop.
        – Race … free choice. no restriction on what to start on but must use two different compounds. This will be fun to watch.
        The allocation of tyres is one set less than normal (12 down from 13) with some return-one used and get a new set provisions. Naturally some variation on this if conditions are wet.
        Since it sounds like details are still being worked out, my guess would be to anticipate future changes. Likely they will need to make it more complex so the fans can appreciate the genius of it all.

  4. Maybe I am connecting too many point (insert Pepe Silvia meme here), but I got a bad impression from this notion of “less time to prepare” coming from Masi. I mean, more than once some of Masi’s decision were critized by how unexpected they were – restarts, for instance. Here is where the conspiratory theory begins: maybe this “teams/drivers having less time to react/prepare creates exciting racing” is a mindset or even a mandate in the current F1 admininstration. I have nothing against making racing great, but it is not working and exposing drivers to more risks.

  5. Less track time before qualifying may have an effect initially but teams & drivers will very quickly adapt to the new format, Come up with new run programs & of course fall back on more of the simulation tools they have available.

    There was a quote from a driver in a daily round-up recently discussing how teams have already ajusted Friday run plans & are now getting all the data they were previously despite having an hours less track time this year.

    And you can also look back to 2003 when most of the teams only had 1 hour of FP1 before the Friday qualifying session (Which was single lap at the time). Initially that did catch some teams/drivers out but after a few races they all figured out how to maximise the track time they had & we began seeing less surprises.

    It’s the same with other things that have been introduced to ‘mix things up’, The high degredation tyres been the obvious example. Montreal 2010 was as exciting as it was not simply because the tyres were suffering high degredation, But because nobody was expecting it & therefore nobody knew how to deal with it. As soon as they went into 2011 knowing the tyres were designed to suffer high degredation everywhere all the teams/drivers spend time figuring out how to deal with it & so as time went on it stopped catching them out. Just look at 2012 as an example of that, The first few races were crazy yet by mid-season & especially the final few races things calmed down & the order returned to normal.

    1. So what you’re saying is that we need a different gimmick every week, so they can never get used to the previous gimmick? :)

  6. “And then having that excitement of a Sprint Qualifying race start on Saturday, which is something we haven’t seen in Formula 1″

    Following grid re-starts after red flags, is the real main reason for the sprint race? This obsession that the grid start is the best bit of the race, so anyway we can find in order to get more of them?

  7. Are there any changes to the rules with regards to the use of race / practice gearboxes?
    My understanding is the currently the teams can use any old gearbox in P1 / P2 without affecting their race allocation. Then they need to fit the race engine and gear box from P3 onwards. This obviously takes time and effort from the mechanics (who look to benefit least from these changes…).
    If you need to fit the race gearbox for Friday Qualifying, can you put the practice one back in for P2 on Saturday? Or does parc ferme mean that they have to use the race gear box for Q1/2/3, P2, SQR and R? and only the practice one for P1?

    1. @eurobrun Considering that the cars are put into parc-ferme from the start of Qualifying on Friday i’d imagine they will just have to use the same engine, gearbox etc… for the whole weekend.

      They could probably still run a practice engine/gearbox in FP1 but that would give the mechanics a lot of work to get everything swapped over in time for qualifying & without any running to shake the cars down before qualifying i’m not sure they would want to risk it.

  8. Gee. Why even have practice sessions?

    We could run qualifying straight off on Friday and squeeze a sprint race in.

    Get rid of P2 on Saturday and we could squeeze in two sprint races. We could even make one a reverse grid race.

    So much excitement, such a spiced up weekend. The fans will just love it!!!!!!!!

    1. @dbradock Or we could try a more exciting way to qualify on Saturday, and then use the traditional flying lap method that everyone is so excited about, on Friday, making that a more meaningful day.

      1. @robbie of course you’d take the bait. :)

        It’s not the stupidity of the sprint race experiment that’s gotten me riled up. It’s the fact that they think taking away practice sessions where teams, particularly the lower budget ones, are able to fine tune their cars to gain quite a bit of performance.

        Even now with the shortened sessions, we see a lot of the teams arriving with a fairly average set up being unable to really experiment much to improve them. I kinda miss the cars pulling in, getting worked on for 10 minutes and then blasting out for a few laps to see if they’ve adjusted it in the right or wrong direction and then adjusting it some more.

        To me this whole push towards randomness and short races is just so blatantly transparent I expect to be not watching F1, or at least something that used to be F1 within the next 5 years.

  9. What is the actual points distribution for the ‘Race’ on Saturday?

    1. I believe the plan is to award 3 points for the winner, 2 Points for 2nd & 1 point for 3rd.

  10. What a sad excuse and argument to make to try and push the sprint race.
    It’s easily within the capability of the FIA to limit how data is used during an F1 weekend.

    Like no longer allowing data to be sent back to HQ and analysed and simulated 24/7 and only allowing the onsite team to work with all of the data or a certain amount of the data.

    It would emphasize the need of track time to setup the car, and possibly the skill of the driver in interpretating the behaviour of the car, rather than relying on supercomputers and hunderds of people to do the job instead.

    Somehow there is/has been a paradigm shift from sport, performance through skill and excellence, to gameshow, “anything can happen friday”.

  11. “And then having that excitement of a Sprint Qualifying race start on Saturday, which is something we haven’t seen in Formula 1.”

    Perhaps I misunderstood, but F1 should be, by tradition, a “sprint” race? I mean that’s why it wasn’t called “endurance” race.

    1. Perhaps I misunderstood, but F1 should be, by tradition, a “sprint” race?

      If the definition of a sprint race is drivers been able to drive flat out throughout it (Which seems to be how many view the term) then F1 has never really been a sprint race formula.

      There has since the very beginning always been some aspect of the car they have had to manage that has seen them drive at less than flat out.

  12. The seven-times champion has previously called on F1 to vary its event structure at different venues. “I’ve always said that we need to have some sort of different format at certain races through the year,” he said. “There are some tracks, particularly places like Monaco for example, which is beautiful to be at but it’s it’s not an exciting race necessarily

    Kind of off-topic but i wasn’t aware Lewis had said anything like that in the past, I thought he was more of a traditionalist and resistant to changes in the format. But on this one i completely agree. I think the cars have long-since outgrown their ability to be raced around a track like Monaco and I don’t think any track changes could remedy this (nor do i expect the 2022 generation of cars to be significantly better for this).

    So I would like to see them try a new format for Monaco especially. I’m thinking something along the lines of a staggered time trial where multiple cars are spaced out on track competing over a say 20 lap time trial race, with the group you are in set by a standard qualifying session. There would be some quirks to iron out to make sure it runs smoothly and everyone has the correct incentives, but I’d rather they try something like that than watch processions in Monaco forever more where the running order only changes occasionally during pitstops or due to rain.

  13. Was amusing to hear Sky saying that if you can’t watch the real qualifying session live you can just record it given how all of Sky’s marketing & promotion tagline is ‘It’s only live once’ with the more in-depth marketing going on about how sport needs to be watched live as you lose some of the jeopardy, tension & excitement watching it delayed.

    Not to mention how you can’t record if you are watching via sky’s NowTV service & while they recently did at least add On-demand stuff to the NowTV sports package, The F1 full session replays are often not added until the following day.

  14. It’s easily within the capability of the FIA to limit how data is used during an F1 weekend.

    Like no longer allowing data to be sent back to HQ and analysed and simulated 24/7 and only allowing the onsite team to work with all of the data or a certain amount of the data.

    It would emphasize the need of track time to setup the car, and possibly the skill of the driver in interpretating the behaviour of the car, rather than relying on supercomputers and hunderds of people to do the job instead.

    Somehow there is/has been a paradigm shift from sport, performance through skill and excellence, to gameshow, “anything can happen friday”.

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