Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has called on F1 to “evolve” the sprint races if it is to hold the interest of the fans.
F1 featured six sprint events throughout the past season in Azerbaijan, Austria, Belgium, Qatar, the United States, and São Paulo.
There will again be six next year, but with China and Miami replacing Azerbaijan and Belgium.
Three-time F1 champion Max Verstappen has long criticised the sprint, deriding it earlier this year as “artificial excitement”, and believing it should be scrapped.
Whilst Horner has not gone quite as far as his driver in deriding the sprint, he does at least feel changes need to be made.
“It’s clear that the sprints need to evolve a bit,” said Horner. “I can understand the concept and it being action on all three days, which for the promoter and the fans has an interest.
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“But I think the sprints, in some cases, have been slightly underwhelming. There’s no pit stop, it tends to stay in grid order, and it’s a little bit like getting a medal for a long run.
“If there can be a bit more racing introduced, but then, of course, you’ve got to look at what are the consequences with that; if you were to reverse the grid; if there were (more) points involved, etcetera.
“I think it needs a bit more work on it within the sporting forum, and then, no doubt, we’ll sit down at the next (F1) Commission meeting early in the new year and hopefully finalise a format.”
This year, the schedule has seen a single practice session followed by grand prix qualifying on Friday, and Saturday set aside solely for the sprint, with the shootout followed by the one-third distance race. The main event is in its prime slot on Sunday.
Criticism has been aired this year, though, of the detachment between qualifying and the grand prix, and notably, with the cars locked down under parc fermé conditions on a Friday, and unable to be altered for the race, despite what unfolds on Saturday.
For next year, proposals have been made that will see the shootout on Friday evening after the afternoon’s practice session, with the sprint and grand prix qualifying on Saturday.
It is understood the parc fermé rules will also be tweaked.
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said: “We think that some tuning in the sequence of the sessions, and some changes when it comes to the parc fermé rules, is the right direction.”
Disagreeing with Horner, however, Stella added: “We don’t think there should be some dramatic changes in the execution of the sprint race.”
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