Why a Qatar sprint race coronation for Verstappen befits a dull 2023 F1 season

There’s no need to feel sorry for Max Verstappen. He’s on the cusp of becoming a three-time Formula 1 world champion, after all. But for a driver presently operating at such a consistently high level, perhaps he deserves to wrap up one of his titles in something approaching ‘normal fashion’.

The last-lap farce of Abu Dhabi 2021 was met by Mercedes seeking immediate legal counsel to throw the result into doubt. Few could get their points permutations correct for a rain-shortened Suzuka contest last year that left Verstappen to eventually find out his fate courtesy of a parc ferme chat with the FIA.

And then there’s this weekend in Qatar. Should Verstappen score three points or more on Saturday, regardless of what his competitors might muster, then one of the most outspoken critics of the format stands to seal his third crown in a sprint race.

Maybe that’s fitting for the 2023 season, however. In a year when one driver and team have walked all over the competition, where there was no retiring four-time champion and Alpine-McLaren contract saga to spice up the driver market ‘silly season’, or even a controversial breach of the cost cap to get people talking, a showstopper coronation would feel out of place. On-track and off it, this has not been a blockbuster narrative for the ages.

When a point for fastest lap was introduced for 2019, there were immediate reservations that something so trivial might influence a championship. Had that rule change been introduced 11 years previously, 2008 champion Felipe Massa wouldn’t now be compiling a legal challenge, for example…

Then, in 2021, sprint races were adopted. Initially, the winner banked three points. Now it’s eight. That they pay out at all and have been scheduled within the final stages of a season means the FIA has already flirted with the idea that the champion could be crowned outside of a grand prix – the sanctity of which has been devalued by the very existence of sprints, let alone the prospect of one deciding the title.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, himself a sprint race sceptic (listen to his monotonic radio messages at the chequered flag), said to Sky Sports: “The fact that it [could be] done in Qatar on a Saturday evening will make the Sunday even more enjoyable – to go into that grand prix, if he achieves it, as the world champion.”

The encroachment of sprint races onto the calendar remains a divisive topic, and now could be given more significance if Verstappen finishes sixth or better on Saturday

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

More enjoyable for whom? Those clad in Red Bull attire only, it seems. His comments, in essence, suggest that, with the pressure potentially lifted, the Qatar GP will act as something between a testimonial and an extended parade lap for Verstappen. Hardly a thrilling prospect.

Interest wanes when the championship is won with rounds to spare. Should Verstappen get the job done on Saturday, he will technically seal the title with six GPs to run. In doing so, he would match Michael Schumacher’s record effort from 2002, when the German seized the spoils at the French GP in July.

This time around, any dip in the audience might even arrive overnight when there’s the ‘main event’ still to play. It’s not as though the sheer spectacle of cars charging around the largely unnoteworthy Losail Circuit is reason enough to cancel plans and weld yourself to the sofa.

Since there hasn’t been any kind of title race to latch onto in 2023, maybe such a damp squib is a neat snapshot of the entire campaign

While comparisons between motorsport and football aren’t seamless, at least when the victor is crowned on the pitch with a game or two to spare there are other prizes up for grabs in terms of European qualification or surviving relegation. But where F1 is concerned, although the extra millions that a midfield team might bank by climbing from sixth to seventh in the constructors’ championship is critical to them, it doesn’t equate to excitement for viewers.

And even though Verstappen defending his title is realistically little more than a formality, still a degree of intrigue will be lost when it’s mathematically sealed. That it could be converted via the medium of a sprint race diminishes the anticipation that bit more.

Sprint races may well have a place in F1. Certainly, they have a good habit of feeding into the weekend story. The headline-dominating Copse crash between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone in 2021 wouldn’t have happened if the duo hadn’t diced the day before. Similarly, the best race of 2022, the Austrian GP, wouldn’t have featured Charles Leclerc passing Verstappen for the lead three times unless Ferrari had analysed why it shredded its Pirellis 24 hours earlier. But for a sprint race to crown a champion gives a timetabling quirk far too much prominence.

Then again, since there hasn’t been any kind of title race to latch onto in 2023, maybe such a damp squib is a neat snapshot of the entire campaign. Besides, this will all be a distant memory when next season surely goes down to the wire as McLaren takes another leap forward and Mercedes, having ditched its size-zero sidepod architecture, finds its ground-effects feet to make Red Bull sweat…

Would an early coronation in Qatar only make the remainder of the weekend that bit less appealing for fans to tune into?

Photo by: Jake Grant / Motorsport Images