Sprint races are a bit like marmite: you either love them or you hate them and they will always divide opinion across the Formula 1 paddock.
Max Verstappen has probably been the most vocal as the four-time world champion, who has the most sprint victories with 12, previously said he gets “no satisfaction” from winning them.
Lance Stroll, meanwhile, revealed “I like the sprint weekends” after the topic was put to him ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. This comes after the 2026 sprint calendar was announced on Tuesday, when it was revealed the number of half-distance races will remain at six per year as it has been since 2023.
The sprint concept was introduced in 2021 as a means of shaking up the grid and encouraging ticket sales earlier in the grand prix weekend. It started off with just three in a season, but the number has obviously since doubled and there is even talk of increasing it to 10 come 2027.
“I have to say that aside from some older die-hard fans, everyone wants sprint weekends,” F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said. “Promoters push for this format and now the drivers are interested as well.”
But are they? Well, Stroll certainly is as he thinks “every time you get in the car, there’s something to fight for”. He is of course referring to the fact that sprint weekends mean there are more competitive sessions with just one practice outing, as opposed to three at a regular round.
Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls Team, Lance Stroll, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Alexander Nemenov / AFP via Getty Images
“It makes the weekends very exciting for the teams, for the drivers, for the fans watching, too,” added the Aston Martin driver. “It’s a lot more action over the three days.”
A similar view is held by Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who relishes the thought of jumping straight from free practice into sprint race qualifying.
“Sprint weekends are quite exciting,” said the 19-year-old, who claimed pole for this year’s Miami sprint. “As a driver it is a challenge because you go from free practice straight into qualifying and the challenges are the ways to try and get to the limit and understand how much you can push.”
“So it’s good fun,” he added. “I’ve been enjoying the sprint weekends this year – definitely wouldn’t mind having more of those in the future.”
Current championship leader Oscar Piastri was another driver in Baku to claim “adding more sprints is not necessarily a bad idea”, but there are some who oppose it. Haas racer Esteban Ocon, for example, got quite philosophical about the debate.
“We are living now in a consumer world where we want more and more, we want more races,” said the F1 veteran.
Esteban Ocon, Haas F1 Team
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Formula 1 via Getty Images
“When we watch Wednesday on Netflix, we don’t want to wait 10 days for the second part of the season. But when it’s done, we really quickly forget things and we go on to the next one, because we have so much content to watch.
“It’s the same thing for sports, it’s the same thing for anything now because we have the choice, we have a lot of entertainment.
“But I remember when I was young and I was expecting so much the next race and it was actually quite long to wait for it. It was a big highlight of my week when Sunday was the grand prix.
“Now we already race almost every week and to have a sprint on top, yes, it’s a lot more content, for sure we’ll have more views because we are racing on Saturday, but I believe it’s probably a bit too much.
“I don’t mind racing more. I would always be happy to race more but, I kind of prefer to have that expectation, building up to the grand prix and enjoying what you’re watching.”
The 29-year-old Haas driver makes a solid point because too much content can actually have a negative impact and with 24 rounds on the calendar, drivers are already starting to feel the limit. It could also lead to fans switching off given the amount of action to follow and Charles Leclerc echoed Ocon’s thoughts.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Lando Norris, McLaren, Lance Stroll, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Joe Portlock / LAT Images via Getty Images
“My personal opinion is that I think the amount of sprint races we have at the moment is good enough and I wouldn’t want to go more than that,” said the Ferrari driver.
Sprint events are part of a long debate about how to spice up grand prix weekends, which rose to the surface again recently when Domenicali proposed the idea of shorter races – or even reverse grid concepts.
The reversed grid idea keeps coming up, but how would it work? Currently F2, as an example, holds two races per weekend and the Saturday contest is a sprint event where the order of the top 10 from qualifying is flipped – yet Piastri thinks that shouldn’t make its way up to F1.
“It’s a bad idea,” said Piastri, who won both the F2 and F3 titles. “Also just from a purely sporting and competitive side of things, the last thing we want as a sport is things being decided or critical results being had from reverse grid races.
“In F2 and F3 I think it works. In Formula 2 and Formula 3 you’re kind of showcasing yourself to why you should be in Formula 1 and I think that’s a way of showcasing certain things.”
It seemed as though the grid was united in its view of reverse grids, with Ocon claiming “I think that’s quite artificial”.
Ayao Komatsu, Haas F1 Team
Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images
“Formula 1 has to be the pure kind of racing that we look out for when we were young,” he added. “It has to be the quickest that wins and the strongest team that wins. Having a reverse grid, yes, again, it’s more show, but it would be artificial.”
His boss Ayao Komatsu added: “I’m not a fan of reverse grid. I don’t think it’s right for Formula 1. It’s too artificial. Too gimmicky, just artificial, really. It’s not really racing for me.”
That seems to be the key concern: how “artificial” are reverse grids? Is F1 entertainment or is it a live sport? Leclerc also argued that it is not within the “DNA” of the championship, because why reward failure by placing a lower-placed driver on pole?
Domenicali seems intent on shaking up the weekend format but right now, the grid is united in wanting to keep reverse grids as a hypothetical scenario.
Read the full article here