F1 sprint 'champion' revealed but Lewis Hamilton in SHOCK position

Podium na Sprint in Austin — Photo: © LAT Images

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F1 sprint 'champion' revealed but Hamilton in SHOCK position

Where the drivers would have finished if there was an F1 sprint championship!

Shay Rogers

Sunday 5 November 2023 11:27 Updated: 12:00

While Formula 1 doesn’t officially have its own ‘Sprint’ championship, that hasn’t stopped us from totalling up who would have won it if it existed.

In 2022, there were just three races, making this concept virtually worthless. However, we were treated – or subject to, depending on your view point – six events this year.

Max Verstappen made the entire grid suffer through his imperious dominance and showed no signs of taking his foot off the gas right until the last lap in Brazil.

The drivers spear towards turn one during the Brazilian Grand Prix sprint

Oscar Piastri sprung a surprise up when he won the Qatar GP sprint, while Pierre Gasly also managed to finish inside the top three at the Belgium GP.

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The key themes

One strange takeaway from tallying up the results was that George Russell showed a repeated pattern of finishes, with eighth and fourth being the only two positions he managed to finish in.

The Brit was one of just three drivers to score points in every sprint, with the accolade also going to Verstappen and Carlos Sainz.

Lewis Hamilton only finished inside the top three once across six sprints this season

Lewis Hamilton likes to finish in seventh place during sprints, doing so on three occasions and failing to score just once.

Only two teams failed to score points in the end, with AlphaTauri narrowly escaping the same fate at the last event in Brazil, as Yuki Tsunoda secured a crucial sixth place in their fight for eighth in the constructors' championship.

Who struggled in 2023?

There’s little in the way of surprises at the bottom of the order, however Esteban Ocon’s sprint struggles were outlined with a 15th place finish in the sprint standings.

Despite a lightning start to year for Nico Hulkenberg, Haas failed to score a single sprint point since their sixth place in the first instalment of the format in Austria.

Nico Hulkenberg and Haas have struggled to find race pace at crucial stages in the F1 season

It may have had its fair share of critics, but it’s safe to say that the format looks set to stay for 2024 and beyond, with the FIA exploring minor changes to the weekend format for next year.

So, without further ado, let's take a look at who scored the most points throughout the course of the six F1 sprint races of the season.