David Croft marks sensational F1 plan to run TWO world championships

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Croft marks sensational F1 plan to run TWO world championships

Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft has given his take on what to do with sprint races

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Tuesday 15 August 2023 19:12

Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft has revealed what he would change about F1 sprint weekends.

Introduced in 2021, the sprint race was originally designed to set the grid for the race on Sunday, and ensure that all three days of a race weekend had some element of competitiveness.

Fast forward two years, however, and sprint races are used in addition to the standard race weekend, and have no bearing on Sunday's grid, often leading to cramped weekends and confusion around Parc Ferme rules.

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Max Verstappen holds the all-time record for sprint race wins with five, but Croft believes that the sprint concept should be completely separate to the standard world championship we know.

Max Verstappen is the all-time sprint race record holder, with five wins

Batting for two world titles

Speaking to the Sky Sports F1 podcast, he said "The sprint concept is good, I like it, but I don’t like it being part of the world championship. I’d like two separate world championships. Like cricket has with T20, ODI and Test cricket, we’ll keep them separate.

“Have your sprint day on the Friday rather than the Saturday and you could go into Sprint qualifying, and then the sprint, with a 20 minute warmup in the morning, that’s your Friday.

"You then have practice on the Saturday, Saturday qualifying and then the race on Sunday. So you’re keeping the two very separate for different world championships.

"If the drivers don’t want to run in the sprint world championship, fine, there’s enough reserve drivers that do.”