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Max Verstappen has no doubt the F1 Sprint event was the root cause of the disqualifications of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc after the United States Grand Prix.
Three-time F1 champion Verstappen has disliked the Sprint since its inception, and ahead of this weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix, he again left no stone unturned in his critique of the one-third distance event.
Over the course of a Sprint weekend, the cars cannot be technically altered from post-qualifying on a Friday evening, leaving the teams only one practice session to make the right set-up calls ahead of navigating the Sprint Shootout, the Sprint itself, and then the grand prix.
Throw in the extremely bumpy nature of the Circuit of The Americas, where virtually every single driver complained about its unevenness, and it provided the cocktail for Mercedes driver Hamilton and Ferrari’s Leclerc to be disqualified after the rear skid pads on their cars were found to have breached the regulations.
“Of course, I don’t think anyone does that on purpose, but it’s just even more because of this Sprint format where you only have one practice session where you try to nail everything,” said Verstappen.
“Once you are in the wrong, there’s nothing you can do. The only thing you can do is bump up the tyre pressures, but then you’re driving around on balloon tyres.
“Of course, it’s not what we want to see. We know that dropping the car gives you performance.
“But it’s just because of this whole format that you put yourself in this position because I don’t think anyone over a normal weekend would run like that.
“So I think we should just get rid of the Sprint weekend and then everyone can just set up their cars normally. It wouldn’t have happened if we’d had a normal race weekend.
“These things only happen when you have a Sprint weekend where everything is so rushed in between FP1 one and qualifying and you think ‘We might be okay’ (in terms of setup).
“From our side, I think we went a bit too conservative, but, of course, that’s still better than the other way.”
It is understood F1 is currently looking into ways to improve the Sprint show, potentially running practice, shootout, and Sprint on Friday, with qualifying and the grand prix over the weekend as normal, but with changes allowed from Friday into Saturday.
Other suggestions have included a reverse grid Sprint, or even a standalone championship.
Verstappen, though, has no interest in any tweak of any kind.
“Like I’ve always said ‘Why? Why do we need to try and invent something?'” questioned Verstappen, not for the first time this year.
“Our product works if you just make sure the cars are competitive, and the rules stay the same for a long time. Why are we always inventing new things?
“It almost sounds like craziness (to say) that ‘Oh, we need to come up with something’. Just leave it the same. Why do we suddenly need to come up with other things to try and make it entertaining?
“If you have a good race on your hands with cars close to each other, then you don’t need a Sprint format or weekend.”
Regarding the standalone Sprint championship, the Red Bull driver became further disenchanted.
“That doesn’t mean anything to me, even if you were to win it,” said Verstappen. “It’s the same now. You cross the line and it’s ‘Alright, well, tomorrow is the race’.
“There’s no satisfaction to win a Sprint for me.
“Honestly, for me, they can do what they want with the Sprint format because I don’t really find it interesting.
“As I said before, why do we need to keep on trying to make changes when I feel like if it fails.”
