The sixth and last dash race of the 2023 season will happen over the Sao Paulo Grand Prix weekend, as Interlagos turns into the one circuit to have hosted sprints in all three seasons since F1 started to experiment with introducing shortened races.
Dash races have been used as a technique of setting the grid throughout 2021 and 2022 for the complete grands prix, however 2023’s reformat has successfully created a standalone day for dash qualifying and the race on Saturdays.
Sainz reckons that F1 ought to hold experimenting with completely different codecs for the sprints, if to develop a state of affairs the place the Saturday race doesn’t find yourself being too reflective of the primary occasion on Sunday.
“Proper now, I agree that six is sufficient. However I agree that Saturday is just too revealing of what is going on to occur on Sunday, which is mainly the primary stint of the race of Sunday, what you are watching on TV.
“And this does not assist. I feel the present is the primary race, is the grand prix. So if you happen to’ve arrived to that time, you’d higher strive one thing else on Saturday.
“Is that reverse grids? Is that single lap qualifying? I do not know. However I feel provided that the dash format is a little bit of an experiment happening proper now in System 1, I might be open to maintain experimenting to see which format is greatest.
“For me, the one now we have now, it is simply Saturday would not really feel fully proper for what then comes on Sunday.”
Photograph by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
Carlos Sainz, Scuderia Ferrari
Sainz’s former team-mate Lando Norris recommended that, if the format was as much as him, he would like that the dash race factor was gone and the race weekend compressed into two days with a single observe session previous qualifying.
This was a format that F1 experimented with throughout the COVID-affected 2020 season, because the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix was held over two days with a solitary 90-minute observe session.
“I’ve all the time favored the conventional race weekends, to be sincere. So if I might simply select, I would just return to having that,” stated Norris.
“The reason being for the followers and to placed on extra of a present and issues like that. I just like the problem of simply FP1 after which qualifying, I feel it is higher. I feel it is for me extra satisfying, extra of a problem for the engineers and for us as drivers.
“So if we simply had FP1, qualifying, and a most important race – a Saturday-Sunday, it will be good over two days. I feel that is perhaps the one factor, nevertheless it’s not my alternative, so it would not matter.”