At the British Grand Prix Formula 1 trialed the sprint qualifying race format, and Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff seems to generally like the concept.
However, The Austrian has a few suggestions on how the concept could be tweaked to make it more succesful.
“I think we have seen in the past that sometimes racing is different to simulations and that is why I am not a fan of live experimenting,” Wolff said.
“But this one is not hugely controversial. I am totally against reverse grids. It is just fake. But here, everybody started from the right positions.
“I believe that qualifying was on Friday and also [Saturday] qualifying should be called qualifying and not a sprint race, but this is really a detail.
“I believe that it was a bit dull towards the end but until then, I would say it has merit and, as I said before, I think if it is a kind of grand slam for a few races.
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“I think that is good because you provide some real entertainment on the Saturday. We are prime time TV Friday night, we are prime time TV Saturday night and obviously, the grand prix.”
There was one problem, thought. Since Formula 1 had a classic qualifying session on Friday, Saturday’s Free Practice 2 seemed a bit redundant.
Sure, it was necessary for teams to gather long-run data, but for fans it was boring, since the lap times didn’t mean anything.
“I agree that Saturday morning FP2 is a bit random but you need to have a session where you are long-running and because you don’t know the fuel weights, the results are actually irrelevant. Only the team knows.
“So I think we can tweak on the format a little bit but fundamentally, I think if we do five races like this, I am pro,” concluded Mercedes’ team boss.