The MAJOR race change that could decide world championship

Comments from F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali earlier this week may have given some drivers quite a fright while they are on their summer breaks.

Domenicali revealed in an interview on The Race podcast that certain tweaks could be made to the current sprint race format.

The sprint race weekend was introduced to the F1 calendar in 2021, where three events at Silverstone, Monza and Interlagos were initially trialled.

Originally, the format hosted qualifying on Friday which set the grid for the sprint and the result of the sprint race established the grid for Sunday’s grand prix. Points were only awarded to the top three finishers, three for the winner down to one point for third.

However, in 2023 the format changed with eight points for the winner, descending to one for P8, with a separate sprint qualifying established and Sunday’s grid was determined by traditional qualifying.

Domenicali has now said that there could soon be more than the six sprint race weekends that have been on the calendar in 2024 and 2025, which could have a major bearing on the direction of future world championships.

Not only this, but the F1 CEO has also suggested that reverse grid order could be used for sprint races in the future, in a similar style to junior formulas F2 and F3. Exciting for us fans, but surely a step too far in terms of altering the skills required to win a world championship.

Why sprint race reverse grids would not work in F1

How F2 sprint races work is that whoever qualifies first will start 10th for the sprint race, before taking up their pole position for the feature race the day after. So, in the sprint you will have the pole sitter in 10th, the person who qualified in second starting ninth and so on, with the driver who qualified 10th starting on pole. The rest of the grid remains the same.

It's a change that has been called for before in F1, with George Russell one driver who has suggested in the past that it could be a good way to shake things up.

While it does allow more drivers to experience the feeling of starting a race from pole, and ultimately leads to more race winners, in F1 it is notoriously more difficult to overtake than in the junior formulas.

This would likely mean that good qualifiers - like Charles Leclerc or Russell himself - would be punished for the sprint races, and miss out on a healthy chunk of points simply because they qualified in second but got stuck in a DRS train in the midfield.

It would also hugely benefit somebody like Max Verstappen. The Dutchman is known for his elbows-out approach, and his ability to carve overtaking opportunities out of nowhere.

You could argue that this is a good thing because he is a four-time world champion, and we would get to see the best of his overtaking abilities during sprint races, but it would lead to a complete change in the skills required from other drivers to be able to compete in the championship, particularly if the number of sprint events is increased.

Do we really want to be celebrating mediocrity by allowing somebody who qualified in 10th to start an F1 race from pole position?

Why F1 should not add more sprints to the calendar

This point about drivers needing to completely change their driving style in order to compete in the championship would be accentuated by there being even more sprint weekends on the calendar.

Currently, drivers are handed eight points for a race win, and across six sprint weekends that means that there is a maximum of an extra 48 points on offer throughout the season.

Should Domenicali opt to increase that to, let's say nine, then that number of points available would be like adding an extra three grands prix to the schedule.

This could have huge implications for future world championship battles, particularly closely-fought title battles like the current one we are witnessing between McLaren stars Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

Of course, F1 could choose to increase the number of sprint events but reduce the number of points that they offer for a sprint race win.

While this could be an adequate solution, it would not address concerns about adding races to what is already a jam-packed F1 schedule, and that in itself could lead to burn out and diminishing interest among F1 fans.

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