Following the announcement of another six sprint races for the 2025 season, I give my view on whether or not they are good or bad for the sport.
Image: Getty
Since 2021, sprint races have featured on the Formula 1 calendar in the hopes of brining more entertainment to the fans watching but they have long had fans divided.
In 2023, Formula 1 decided to increase the amount of sprint races per year from three to six which just added to the disparity between fans with those not in favour becoming more vocal of them.
The format has also been changed several times with teams now finally happy with the current format as they can change the setup of the car after the sprint race so anything learnt can be applied before the race qualifying.
The current format features practice 1 on Friday morning with the sprint qualifying in the afternoon and the sprint on Saturday morning. The rest of the weekend is as normal.
In 2025, the sprint races will be held at China, USA (Miami), Belgium, USA (Texas), Brazil and Qatar, with the change compared to 2024 being Austria being dropped which I believe it should have stayed after this years opening few laps.
Previously, many criticized that the lack of practice time meant teams were not able to perfect their setup for the race, leading to teams advocating for change which led to a change in format and rules.
I personally am much happier with the current format and I believe it provides much more entertainment and there is definitely less confusion over the format, which occurred with the previous format.
However, I do find myself looking forward to the traditional race weekends more despite there being just the one race. In contrast, the sprint events do seem to be well placed as if you aren't interested, they are where practice would normally be so you can just skip them.
Although, they do add just that bit more excitement (usually) and as I have no first-hand experience of attending a Formula 1 event where a sprint race has taken place, I cannot comment if it is better than attending a traditional race weekend.
I would have thought that if there are little to no support races, it would definitely be a good place to have a sprint weekend but where there's races in between the practice sessions from the support series, there isn't really a need for them.
Image: XPB
Most Formula 1 drivers don't seem that interested in them either with Max Verstappen publicly uninterested in a sprint weekend.
On the weekend of the 2023 Azerbaijan Grand Prix he said: “Just scrap the whole thing,”
“I think it’s just important to go back to what we had and make sure that every team can fight for the win, that’s what we have to try and aim for [rather than] trying to implement all these kinds of artificial excitement.
“I got bored through today’s qualifying. I like to have one particular qualifying where you just put everything in it, which was yesterday which I of course enjoyed. But then we had to do it again today.
“I was like ‘my God, another qualifying’. I just don’t really enjoy that.”
Another suggestion for the sprint format made by Eddie Jordan was to run young drivers or reserve drivers for the sprint race but this kind of takes the idea away and I don't think there'd be any point in it as it would just be like a F1.5 and wouldn't contribute to the championship.
Overall I think sprint races do add entertainment to the sport and do add some variety to the calendar but if you were to ask me if I'd miss them if they were removed? Probably not.