The news was in the air and now it has become official. There F1 Commission, met today, confirmed the new format for the Sprint weekends.
Weekend Sprint with two qualifications
From this week therefore, with the Grand Prix of Azerbaijan in Baku, we will have a new weekend format. As always, it will start on Friday (11 am) with the first free practice session, followed by qualifying (30 pm) which will establish the starting grid for Sunday's race. With qualifying on Friday, parc fermé will officially begin, which will not allow the mechanics to be able to make set-up changes on the cars. For this, Saturday FP2s are eliminated.
To replace them, there will be another qualifying session (10 am) which will decide the starting grid of the Sprint, which will take place later in the afternoon (30 pm). We are talking about a shorter qualifying (called Sprint Shootout), with Q1 lasting 12 minutes, Q2 10 and Q3 8 minutes. The tires to be used will be the averages for Q1 and Q2 and the softs for Q3. On the other hand, no changes will be made for Sunday, with the immovable race starting at 13:00.
There is the official announcement
This new format was decided by the F1 Commission which met today. They were the ones to vote all the most important members of the Circus: F1, FIA and the ten teams that have therefore chosen to favour, under a certain aspect, even more the “show” that Domenicali likes so much. Regardless of the goal, however, the choice seems to be the right one: free practice sessions are eliminated which, with parc ferme, were not indispensable to the teams and, with a new qualification for the Sprint, the opportunity is given which determines the starting grid on Sunday and who proved to be the fastest on the track.
Everything is ready
It will be a change that will bear fruit? It is clearly still very early to tell, but we just have to wait for this weekend with the Sprint which will officially debut within this new 2023 season.
