Andrew Shovlin, chief race engineer at Mercedes, spoke about the changes associated with the sprint races, the first of which will be held in Imola at the end of April.
Andrew Shovlin: “Last year we had three sprint races because we just needed to see if this weekend format works and if it’s worth developing this idea in the future.
Teams and riders in this format have serious difficulties to overcome, and they have to do with the fact that we only have one hour on Friday to prepare the car for the qualifying that determines the starting order in Saturday’s sprint.
It’s not easy, and at the same time we have to take into account that last year we were dealing with a well-known car and tires, we were able to work on the simulator, we were able to use the proven settings and at the same time we were pretty sure that all would be well when we got to the track.
But now we are doing an intensive study of the new car, new tires, so the days of the race weekend in Imola are guaranteed to be difficult. If everything goes well from the start of practice, it’s probably going to be a good weekend. But if you start working on the track and find out that something is wrong with the car, then the situation can be quite unpleasant.
Therefore, every effort should be made to ensure that the settings are more or less correct from the start of the weekend.
In general, the experiment with sprint races will continue in 2022, there will again be three such weekends – in Imola, in Austria and in Brazil. But there are some changes: the driver with the best time in qualifying, and not in the sprint race, is now considered the owner of the pole position.
That. no matter how the events develop on Saturday, this rider will win the pole position, which will be included in the official statistics. There is another change: points are now awarded to more riders. Not the top three, like last year, but the top eight. The winner of Saturday’s sprint gets 8 points and the one who finishes eighth gets one.
It will be interesting to see how things turn out now, how the results of these races will be evaluated, how the fans will react to it, but there is no doubt that some changes will be made to this format.”
Source: F1 News
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