So after a year of F1 trying and trying to get some kind of sprint race into the grand
prix weekend, they finally have an agreement to run what they’re calling ‘Sprint Qualifying’
for three races this year: probably Silverstone, Monza and… somewhere else.
So how will this actually play out? Why are they doing it? What will the consequences
be and is it good? Or bad? ..
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guys... To detail exactly what they’re doing, it’s
best to compare it to the existing weekend structure as we know it. To make Sprint Qualifying
work, the whole weekend has to be restructured. A normal weekend has two session slots on
a friday, two on a saturday and one on a sunday. On Friday we see the first two 60 minute practice
sessions for drivers and teams to hone their cars into the track, test some setups and
new parts and do some mock race and qualifying runs in preparation.
Saturday sees a third 60 minute practice session followed by qualifying in the three-part ‘elimination’
format we’ve had since 2006 in which the lowest performing cars are eliminated at the
end of each part until we finish with a top ten shootout.
On Sunday we have the race - a 300 km run from lights to flag in which the top ten finishers
and the driver with the fastest lap* get points. This is the only point scoring part of the
weekend. The Sprint Qualifying format keeps Free Practice
1 first thing on a Friday. But the second Friday session is now ‘normal qualifying’
as was previously held on a Saturday. Three parts, drivers eliminated in each part with
a top ten shootout. The first session on a Saturday is now the
second and last practice session. Sixty more minutes to do any final data gathering.
The second Saturday session is now the new Sprint Qualifying session.
This is a race. It’s a 100km long race, so a third of the length of a normal race.
Depending on the track, this will put it somewhere between 25 and 40 minutes in length, and pitstops
aren’t expected. The grid for this race is set exactly by Friday
qualifying with no twists or reversal. The idea is to have a flat out run from a
standing start to the finish, perhaps the purest racing we’ll see as you would expect
everyone to go with the same tyre compound through the race.
At the end of the sprint race the top three finishers will be awarded 3, 2 and 1 points.
There will be no podium, the celebration will be similar to the post-qualifying vibe with
interviews and a single trophy for the ‘pole sitter’.
And I say pole sitter rather than winner, because the results of this race in its entirety
will become the grid order for the full Grand Prix on Sunday which will be functionally
identical in format to any normal grand prix. So if you win the Sprint Qualifying race,
you are the pole sitter for Sunday. So that’s the format in general - let’s
break down some of the details. There have been a few adjustments to the normal
rules to make this work. In the normal race weekend, Parc Fermé conditions
apply from the start of Qualifying on Saturday. These basically lock the car down at that
point. You can’t make any major setup adjustments, add or remove parts or work on the car at
all really other than a few exceptions for safety. Plus tyre changes, filling the car
with fuel and minor front wing adjustments. The car you send to qualifying is the car
you run all the way to the end of the race. In a Sprint Qualifying weekend, Parc Fermé
is brought forward lock down the car from before Friday Qualifying until the start of
FP2. The FIA will allow some changes so FP2 isn’t
a complete waste of time. They haven’t yet clarified what these will be exactly, but
they are likely to be minor. The cars will return to Parc Fermé at the start of Spring
Qualifying. You can also replace certain parts like-for-like
if they get damaged or worn - like if you smash your front wing off or want to replace
your brake pads. If you’ve run out of like-for-like components, you can of course bolt on an old
one. The main reason for bringing Parc Fermé forward
to Friday is to stop teams building and setting up a car just for qualifying, only to spend
all night changing it back into a car fit for an actual race. That’s a waste of everyone’s
time and resources. Challenging them to set up up a car to perform across all competitive
sessions is a better endeavour. OK so how do tyres work?
Let’s just focus on dry tyres for the moment. In a normal weekend, each car gets thirteen
sets of dry tyres of various compounds. This year (as in 2020), Pirelli are choosing the
range of compounds that every team gets for each race to simplify things during the pandemic,
but in previous years the teams can choose their own selection.
So normally, two of these sets of tyres are set aside just for the race and cannot be
used until then. One of the soft sets of tyres is reserved
for Q3. You can use the other tyres as you wish, but
you have to hand back two sets of tyres at the end of each practice session. So, at the
end of FP1 you can pick two sets of tyres which you will no longer be able to use.
This leaves four sets of tyres to use across Qualifying, plus you get the Q3 tyre if you
make it to the top ten shootout. If you do make it into the top ten shootout,
the tyre you set your fastest Q2 time on is the tyre on which you must start the grand
prix. The Grand Prix itself allows all your remaining
tyres: the five tyres left for qualifying plus the two tyres reserved for the race.
In a Sprint Qualifying weekend, it’s… similar but different.
This time drivers get just twelve sets of tyres for the weekend.
Five soft tyres will be reserved for qualifying, but one of them must be reserved for Q3 as
before. This time, however, you don’t have to use your Q2 tyre for the race start or
the sprint quali start. Two sets of tyres will be reserved for the
race, as before. Of the five remaining tyres, drivers can use
two sets in FP1 and one set in FP2. They can also choose two sets of tyres for
the sprint qualifying race. They’ll only be expected to use one, of course, but some
teams may try something wild with a soft-soft one stop strategy maybe? We see this sometimes
in Formula 2. If Friday is wet, the teams will get an extra
set of inters, but they have to give a set back before sprint qualifying. And if spring
quali is also wet, the teams can swap a used set of inters for a new one.
Ok so that’s how it’ll all work logistically. Now we ask why they’re doing this. A contentious
point, I know. Firstly, I think it’s important to say that
I think this is a divergence from the usual failed attempts to spice up the race by messing
with qualifying. You know, they’ll try and do reverse grids or that weird timed-elimination
qualifying or other weird ideas to try and make the grand prix more exciting.
If anything, this system will have no benefit on the grand prix at all. In fact, it may
even make it more predictable to be honest. In a normal weekend, if you mess up in qualifying
you’ll have to spend the grand prix fighting back to where you think you belong.
In this weekend format if you mess up in qualifying you’ve got a 100 km race to start catching
up and then another 300 km race to do the rest. That could be an extremely fun 400 km
though - we’ve seen drivers like Perez absolutely make lemonade from a poor position.
You could say that the Sprint Qualifying just lengthens the race by 100 km, with a 24 hour
red flag period in the middle. That’s kind of what it is, to be honest.
OK, so what is the point then? Well, look. Friday practice sessions have
already been cut by an hour overall since last year by we still have three hours of
the cars tootling around the track before qualifying - the first competitive session
of the weekend. Yes, it’s nice for die hards to watch the cars on track in free practice
but there’s not much going on really is there? And the more they practice, the less
unpredictable the race will get as teams gain more and more data. It’s better to have
give the teams less to work with, data-wise and just get them out there with their talent
and instinct. So now they only get one hour of practice
before barrelling straight into qualifying. This could cause some serious headaches. They’ll
want to get in some hot lap practice before quali but also need to do some warm up laps
and hone the car in. Expect Friday Practice to be busy and stressful.
This combined with Friday qualifying means Friday suddenly becomes a really interesting
day instead of two hours of chilled test runs. Every moment is crucial now.
Saturday practice will be more chilled than Friday but now teams have to put their energy
towards race setup. And they only have an hour to do it. So again - more time pressure,
less time to faff about and wait for decent track condition - you just have to get out
there and get the laps in. So overall across the weekend we have three
competitive sessions and two arguably high pressure practice sessions. Previously we
had two competitive sessions and three… fairly chill practice sessions. If everything
works, the energy of the weekend will be lifted. Rather than trying to ‘disrupt’ the weekend
or shake up the order, this is actually meant to make each session more exciting, more valuable.
Of course, a downside is that qualifying is actually a pretty awesome part of the weekend
and a lot of people just won’t be able to watch it on a Friday afternoon. If you’re
at work or school that makes things much trickier for you. Hopefully your broadcaster will run
full repeats of the session on Friday evenings. It’s really hard to make a judgement on
whether the Sprint Qualifying race itself will be good or not. I actually think it probably
will? By eliminating the mandatory pitstop and running it over a shorter distance you’re
forcing drivers to take positions out on track. There will likely be some management of tyres
- when to push and when not to, but you will have to try and fight if you can.
And let’s be honest - there is going to be some incident and accident in the Sprint
Quali. Getting a higher grid slot for the grand prix will be high reward and getting
some damage or dropping down the order from risking a move won’t penalise you as much
as it would in the race. You’ve still got a 300 km race to make it up if things go wrong.
And look, I am all in favour or trying things out. I think we’ll learn something from
this, even if we learn all the negative things and decide to scrap it or make massive modifications.
It’s only three weekends. I think it could be fun.
And here’s an important detail: Ross Brawn says even if it’s a massive success, he
wouldn’t expect it to be implemented for every race. So perhaps this could be the start
of custom qualifying for custom events. Sprint qualifying would suck in Monaco. You
can’t pass there, so what’s the point of adding half an hour more of no passing?
But at a track where there’s opportunity for good racing? Yeah, why not! Sprint Qualifying.
I would go further, to be honest. I’d make Monaco one-shot qualifying, where drivers
go out one by one to set a lap. Tracks like Monaco would be suited to that.
A mixture between one-shot, elimination and sprint qualifying dependent on the track could
work really well if perhaps mess with the tradition and homogeneity of the sport. I
don’t know - what do you think? There’s potential here.
Overall, I’m glad we’re doing this. I think we have to approach this with an open
mind and analyse not just its failures but its successes too. From that we can work out
the best possible format for a grand prix weekend.