Verstappen has been very vocal against F1’s introduction of Sprint race in 2021. The 26-year-old feels the format has made Sunday’s race even more boring for fans as teams know how to set up their cars for the main Grand Prix.
“I just prefer the normal racing format,” he said. “I think it is more exciting, and especially for qualifying you can go more to the limit as you know more what you’ve done in practice. For example, in Suzuka if you do FP1 there and go straight into qualifying you risk having bigger shunts and it is not as fulfilling.
“I always keep saying that once we do a sprint race you get the big picture anyway for the main race, so you know more or less which cars are going to be really good in the race or the ones that are going to drop back. So it takes away the excitement, from when I remember I was a fan and outside of the F1 world, that sense of you don’t know which car is particularly amazing in the long runs, or have they nailed the race set up?”
