Why it's too early to call F1's sprint race a success

Call it what you like (after all, even the people who came up with the idea can’t seem to get its name right every time), but Sprint Qualifying – officially ‘the F1 Sprint’ – could become a fixture of Formula 1 weekends if further trials prove successful.

Indeed, based on its first outing at Silverstone, the auguries are that it will be declared the greatest innovation since the disc brake regardless of whether it’s any good or not; F1’s website presented a gloriously Pravda-esque compilation of team and driver quotes after the event in which you would struggle to find a crumb of ambivalence, let alone negativity.

All this despite prominent drivers, including Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel, saying it shouldn’t be used to determine pole position… although that, surely, was the point of introducing it.

“I think that’s wrong,” says Vettel. “I think they should change that. It doesn’t make sense. It’s a new discipline, so award a new stat for it.”

As the professional hair-splitters who populate the Internet will be happy to mansplain to you at tedious length, pole position is actually determined – or at the very least ratified – by the FIA when it publishes the official starting grid on a Sunday morning.

Hamilton beat Verstappen to top spot in qualifying at Silverstone, but wasn't credited with pole

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Parking this egregious slab of pedantry for a moment, there is a general consensus among purists that pole position should belong to the driver who is fastest over a single lap.

PLUS: Why F1’s pole records could be about to become meaningless

It’s a matter of precedent, since the system of determining grids by lottery was abandoned, that pole is a reward for putting everything on the line to set the quickest lap time. Determining it via a race dilutes this measure of a driver’s greatness – Exhibit A being Lewis Hamilton’s performance in non-qualifying-qualifying on Friday at Silverstone, when he went fastest of all despite not having the quickest car.

Interviewed on TV post-‘Sprint’, Ross Brawn uttered some peculiar and nonsensical homily to the effect that if the ‘Sprint’ had been the grand prix, Hamilton would have lost, and now he had another chance to win the race. Not a hugely convincing argument in favour of the concept.

In the demerit column we have to weigh the absence of strategic variety, since only four drivers started on an alternative tyre and it made very little difference – the positions Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen gained on lap one were earned through skill as much as through superior grip off the line

Pressed gently, he emitted this line again with all the conviction of a ticket clicking out of a slot machine. A less supine interviewer might have pointed out to Brawn that twaddle doesn’t transmute into fact through some special alchemy via repetition.
 Or, indeed, that if their grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon.

The ‘Sprint’ itself was intriguing but considerably more data is required before we can enshrine it as a success. Positives included an exciting opening lap in which the battle between Hamilton and Verstappen brought the crowd to its feet (as indeed it would again the following afternoon), and Fernando Alonso sliced through the field with exquisite daring
 and skill.

In the debrief, Brawn et al would no doubt have taken Sergio Perez’s daft spin – thus ensuring one of the fastest cars started last on Sunday – as an easy win for the Sprint concept.

Verstappen beat Hamilton off the line in the sprint, which was the end of the 'race' as a contest

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

In the demerit column we have to weigh the absence of strategic variety, since only four drivers started on an alternative tyre and it made very little difference – the positions Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen gained on lap one were earned through skill as much as through superior grip off the line.

FP2 was rendered a waste of time, present only to give the morning crowd something to see (and what did that ‘something’ consist of but F1 cars performing long runs, several seconds off the absolute pace). The Sprint also restored the fastest car to the front of the grid and, barring a few outliers such as Alonso, Raikkonen and Perez, it essentially reshuffled the grid in order of race pace. Is this a good thing?

It also settled into tyre-management ho-humness quickly, as evinced by the TV footage cutting over with almost desperate urgency to replays of the start and opening lap.

Still – better than determining the grid via a lottery, I suppose…

Packed grandstands at Silverstone watched F1's first sprint

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images