Ross Brawn declared himself “very pleased” after the debut of Formula 1’s new Sprint Qualifying format at Silverstone.
The F1 motorsport chief was one of the key architects behind the idea, which saw traditional qualifying shifted back to Friday and the outcome of a 100km race on Saturday decide the grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix.
Beforehand, there had been a few cynics who predicted the Sprint would be a procession, and while the action did fizzle out in the closing laps, overall, Brawn was delighted.
“Very pleased,” he said giving his immediate reaction.
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“It’s a completely new concept for Formula 1 but I think one of the things we all saw today was a racing driver is a racing driver and they’re never going to take it easy.
“That first lap or so was completely nail-biting and sensational, and then we had the little duels in the rest of the race.
“Fernando Alonso’s performance was sensational, got my vote for the highlight of the race. I’d buy a ticket for that every day,” Brawn stated, “so we’re very pleased.”
F1 has now confirmed the Italian GP at Monza will be next to trial the Sprint Qualifying format in September with few changes expected in response to Silverstone.
“We’ll let the dust settle on the weekend, spend some time with the FIA and the teams, try and understand if there’s some evolutions we want but we won’t be changing the fundamental format this year,” Brawn explained.
“I think after the three races we can sit down and see where we go from here. But so far very positive.”
One tweak that is being considered is re-allocating the awarding of ‘pole position’ to the fastest qualifier on Friday after some feared doing so for the Sprint winner could cause confusion.
But on the whole, drivers were thrilled to have a much more engaging schedule.
“I loved it. Personally, I love the new format,” Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc said.
“On Friday I am always super bored and I just want to get to Saturday where things are getting serious. At least this time straight away on Friday, things were serious.
“If I can give one personal opinion, it’s that maybe we need to do something for the qualifying to have a bit more power, especially to keep the qualifying for the Sunday.
“But the Saturday Sprint race is a very good thing in my opinion. I’m looking forward to the next two weekends where we’ll have a Sprint on Saturday.”
Sebastian Vettel was among those most critical of the whole qualifying race idea, but even he appeared to warm to the revised weekend.
“We love racing, it’s a little race and it’s weird because it’s by far the shortest race I have done in years, but yeah, it’s not bad,” said the four-time world champion.
“I think Friday to be honest was good fun, to have already something on a Friday that matters, that was nice.
“I could see that maybe in the future there will be more of this. The people liked it, I guess it’s better than a bunch of free practices.”
Alpine’s Fernando Alonso was one of the biggest movers in the F1 Sprint, gaining four places from his original qualifying result of P11.
But while he did benefit, the double world champion would like to see it be made spicier.
“I hope we can keep this format and if anything I will suggest Fridays could be more spicy by having one set of tyres and one qualifying attempt by everybody,” he proposed.
“It gives the same chance to everyone – it’s not unfair or a reverse order or anything like that.
“But if we get one chance it’s the same for everyone and maybe it will change something, because we saw yesterday with six attempts, six sets of tyres, we finish in the performance order of our cars, like every qualifying. Maybe we can change that.”
He’s pretty good at these race starts, isn’t he? ?@alo_oficial absolutely aces it at lights out in the F1 Sprint #BritishGP ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/RpA4JnDr1v
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 17, 2021
And while the idea of the format is to make the current three-day schedule more interesting, Lewis Hamilton thinks F1 should try and condense it.
“I think it’s been great to try something new, if I’m really honest,” he told Sky Sports.
“I don’t think the ‘race’ was particularly exciting after the first lap, for myself. But I think there were definitely learnings we can take from today.
“We should just do a long Saturday and a long Sunday. Like FP1, FP2 and qualifying on a Saturday and then a sprint race and a race on Sunday, if you want to do a sprint race,” Hamilton suggested.
“Just pack it all in – there’s been so much wasted time the last couple of days. Today [Saturday] has been long and obviously yesterday we didn’t do anything in the morning.
“Hopefully that means a little bit less mileage and reduces our emissions, so maybe that’s something we can do in the future.”