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This weekend’s F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix brings with it not only the first Sprint event of 2023 but introduces the Sprint Shootout qualifying session.
While the grand prix and Sprint aspects remain unchanged, the latter no longer determines the starting order for Sunday’s race.
Instead, two separate qualifying sessions will take place, with the first on Friday afternoon setting the grid for the grand prix.
New Sprint format
“The most notable change is the removal of Free Practice 2 from the weekend timetable,” explained Ron Meadows, Mercedes’ sporting director, in an article on the team’s website.
“That has been replaced with a session called the Sprint Shootout.
“This will set the grid for the F1 Sprint later that day and ensures that Saturday is wholly dedicated to this format.
“Qualifying on Friday will therefore determine the starting order for the Grand Prix on Sunday.”
The Saturday Qualifying session will run in much the same format as a traditional, three-part qualifying format used on a standard race weekend.
“The Sprint Shootout will essentially be a condensed version of traditional qualifying, but with some notable differences,” Meadows said.
“SQ1 will last 12 minutes, SQ2 10 minutes, and SQ3 just 8 minutes.
“Drivers will be limited to using one set of the medium tyre in SQ1, another set in SQ2, and one set of the soft compound for SQ3.”
Shootout challenge
Those differences were implemented for two reasons; to differentiate it from Qualifying proper and also due to tyre allocation limits.
It also places increased pressure on drivers, who’ll be expected to operate on the limit straight out of the garage on Saturday morning.
“The drivers will go straight into a qualifying session on Saturday, which is very unusual,” said Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes director of trackside engineering.
“It’s a tall order to expect the drivers to deliver a single-lap performance immediately so I suspect everyone will go for multi-lap runs.
“The medium tyre can handle multiple laps but without having several sets available, there’s a higher chance of getting unlucky with a red flag for example.
“I think everyone will get out on track and get busy trying to put laps in.”
Operational changes
While the change is not expected to create any operational issues for teams, it will force them to prioritise running during the sole practice session on Friday.
“When you’ve only got FP1, it’s practically impossible to condense all the usual learnings across Friday and Saturday into one session,” Shovlin explained.
“You lose the opportunity to focus on the long run and you’ve got to think about what the real priorities are.”
“It will be very tricky for the engineers and drivers to find the optimum set-up for both qualifying and heavy race fuel trim,” added Meadows.
“We will need to maximise the number of laps in FP1, so we likely won’t be planning on making set-up changes that sap running time for the drivers.
“It’s a new way of working for all the teams and provides a fair amount of opportunity to excel.”
Track action in Baku begins on Friday at 13:30 local time (19:30 AEST) with opening practice, with Qualifying at 17:00 (23:00 AEST).
