Formula 1’s divisive sprint race format clearly appeals to the six grand prix promoters who have shelled out a reported $4 million each on top of their annual fees to host them.
But are they – and the spectators who turn up to sprint events – actually getting good value for money.
One event which does not seem destined to become a sprint round in the future is the Canadian Grand Prix at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. The event’s long-tenured promoter, Francois Dumontier, admitted while attending the previous sprint weekend in Miami that he had little desire to lobby for his own race to become a sprint in future.
“I am a fan of the current format with free practice, qualifying, and the race,” said Dumontier. “It’s traditional, but it’s the right one.”
Beyond the concern of having to pay extra fees for the privilege of hosting a sprint weekend, Dumontier also questions if the format provides more value for money for racegoers than a conventional grand prix weekend.
“Formula 1 says we see the cars run as often with five sessions on the circuit,” he said. “But in fact, they are shorter.”
A typical grand prix weekend consists of five Formula 1 sessions: two free practice sessions of an hour on Friday, a third practice session on Saturday morning, also an hour long, then the three-stage qualifying session on Saturday afternoon before the grand prix on Sunday.
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The sprint format has changed every single year since it was first introduced midway through the 2021 season. Although the schedule has changed in 2024, the current format largely follows that which was first introduced in 2023.
Currently, sprint weekends also have five separate sessions over the weekend, starting with a typical hour-long practice session early on Friday. This year, the second session on a Friday is the three-stage sprint qualifying to provide the grid order for the sprint race, which is now the first on-track activity during Saturdays. Once the sprint race is completed, attention turns to the grand prix with the traditional qualifying session followed by the grand prix on Sunday as normal.
All combined, a traditional grand prix weekend has a maximum session time total of 345 minutes, or five-and-three-quarter hours. A sprint weekend, on the other hand, has a maximum session duration length of 270 total minutes, or four-and-a-half hours – over an hour less theoretical track time over the three days.
But reduced overall track time may not be a problem if drivers are running more frequently in that time. However, looking at the data, it appears that that is not the case either.
Comparing circuits that have hosted both conventional grand prix weekends and sprint weekends in recent years, an interesting pattern emerges. The host of the latest sprint round on the calendar, Miami, is perhaps the perfect venue for this having been run to two traditional grand prix formats for its first two season in 2022 and 2023 before becoming a sprint round for this season.
Across its first two years with the same practice, qualifying and grand prix format with the same number of entries with sessions held entirely in the dry, Miami saw an average of 3,337 laps completed by all 20 cars in all five sessions accounting for an average of 18,054km covered.
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However, during this year’s sprint round, there was a clear drop in the overall laps completed. Over the three days of running, the teams combined for 2,528 laps in total at 13,678km. That means that the fans who paid to attend this year’s Miami Grand Prix weekend saw only around three-quarters of the total running than those who attended the 2022 and 2023 editions of the event.
Miami is not an outlier either. Baku saw a smaller but still significant drop in total running across the 2023 Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend of 16.09% compared to the average running in 2021 and 2022 before it. The Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps had an even more dramatic reduction, with the first ever sprint round at the famous circuit seeing over a third less running than the previous season in 2022.
At every circuit in which a representative comparison could be made using the current conventional grand prix format and the sprint format used from 2023 onwards, there was an average drop in on-track activity of 19.81% – almost a fifth less.
Naturally, Formula 1’s argument would be that its sprint rounds are giving fans more meaningful and exciting action condensed into a smaller time frame. The current sprint format also means that fans are watching drivers competing under pressure for the vast majority of the weekend. For example, over the 2024 Miami Grand Prix weekend, 106 of the 131 total laps (80.92%) that Max Verstappen logged were completed in competitive sessions – compared to just 53.33% of his 135 laps at the same event the year prior.
Not only do those laps mean more, drivers are more likely to be pushing and on closer to the limit over those competitive sessions compared to a typical practice session. Fans may see more of the cars over a conventional race weekend, but they see the drivers under pressure far less when compared with sprints.
But there is also another element in that the sprint race can act as a ‘spoiler’ of sorts for the main event itself. Especially in a season where the field is as competitive at the front as it is right now, where there are several contenders for the win and podium places, that decreased predictability is at the heart of what makes the current action so enthralling.
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With a 100km race set a day before the grand prix, there are no longer any place for teams to hide their pace or reason to do so. Instead, we often see the cars at the front running hard – within the limits of their tyres – for the entire race on the same compound. This offers a clear idea of the relative race pace of each team and driver, taking a lot of the mystery out of the grand prix itself.
It ultimately comes down to what matters more to fans – the quality or quantity of the on-track action they pay to witness. But when global inflation means that race promoters are charging fans more than ever before for the privilege of attending their events, that is a balance that the sport has to ensure it strikes.
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