There was a lot of curiosity to see the new generation of car in action on a real track like the one in Shanghai, but not only that: the new format with the Sprint Race. In the 2024 season there will be six races on Saturdays, of which only one will be in Europe. After that of Chinawill in fact also be present in Miami, then in the next seasonal event, then in Austria, in Austin, in Brazil and, in the GP which will anticipate the conclusion of the season in Abu Dhabi, in Qatar.
The new format on the weekend with the Sprint Race is more consistent
From this season the weekend format has changed with the Sprint Race. We always start on Friday morning with the only free practice session and then go to qualifying (Shootout), which defines the starting grid of the Sprint Race. 100 km race that is run on Saturday morning, when, in a normal weekend, free practice 3 would take place, and then the canonical qualifying sessions for the Sunday GP would take place in the afternoon. “It’s the most logical sequence of events” Toto Wolff made it known, with which Aston Martin Performance Director Tom McCullough also agrees, speaking of “a more logical format”. A program which, however, has sent the most traditionalists into crisis. “I’m totally confused with the timing. I don’t know what the session will be and when.” said the Mercedes TP while Christian Horner said he was totally confused by the “world in reverse” which is the new format, given that on Saturday we move from the race to qualifying, therefore totally the opposite of a normal race weekend.
Although the teams are continuing to slow down a process that the promoter would have willingly accelerated, it is no secret that Liberty Media does not want to increase both the number of Grands Prix and the number of Sprints, for sporting reasons, guaranteeing entertainment on the track every day of the weekend, and commercial economics. Helmut Marko spoke about it. “Red Bull organizes the Austrian Grand Prix and having the Sprint is simply an advantage for the spectators, therefore for the organizer, who can enjoy a qualifying session on Friday and a race on Saturday. These two days are therefore easier to market than the classic weekend format“. in fact, the Red Bull super consultant said.
Has the new format removed one of the most important negative factors?
In addition to the reshuffling of the sessions, another important innovation of the new format, which made its debut in China, is the possibility for the teams to work on the setup of their cars from the end of the Sprint Race until qualifying in the afternoon. This solves the problem of having to forcefully start from Pit Lane if you want to make a setup change, as done by Haas and Aston Martin in Austin. And above all it allows us to eliminate or at least limit that negative factor which was linked to a certain lack of ‘surprise’ in the values on the field of the Sunday match, given that on Saturday we already had a very truthful appetizer of what would happen the following day. In China, values have changed significantly, even in the leading positions with the example of the strong steps forward made by Mclaren and those backwards by Ferrari, thanks to the setup changes made after the Sprint Race. However, according to some insiders the Chinese weekend would have exacerbated this shufflingdue to a lack of data given that the Shanghai circuit was to be considered totally new for this generation of cars.
“Now it’s like I have a sort of two half-weekend. The first half of the weekend we are focused on the Sprint, even if there are only eight points for the sprint victory” – Horner said – “The Sunday Grand Prix is still the highlight event but at least now we have the possibility to change the car after the sprint, which is a big step forward.” It is therefore not surprising that the teams try to optimize the settings of their cars, as if they were two separate weekends. A setup initially designed for the low load (30 kg), and then making the right corrections after collecting the Sprint data. Something that Mercedes wasn’t very good at intuiting in Shanghai. “We definitely learned in China that if we want to be ambitious, we need to be ambitious already in the Sprint race and then adjust the car set-up for the main race rather than the other way around.” James Allison said.
Changes to the set-up which could put a lot of pressure on the engineers and especially the mechanics, however, Liberty Media believes that work will be increased only marginally, and more from the point of view of the time available than of the work itself, since, in a normal race weekend, on Saturday morning important setup changes are often made decided by the teams in the usual briefings carried out the previous evening, after having collected the data during the second hour of free practice. However, the teams don’t totally agree and this is the reason why the acceleration that Liberty would have wanted in terms of Sprint Race has not yet really materialized.
