Why social media backlash isn't swaying F1 on sprint race future

While race promoters are all falling over themselves to convince Formula 1’s bosses to award them sprint races in 2022, such a consensus is not shared by fans. Indeed, while Liberty Media has consistently bigged up the fact that the sprint qualifying experiments have been an overwhelmingly popular success, a quick scan of social media relating to any mention of the new format shows there are still many who don’t like it.

Post a story about sprint races, and the majority of responses and comments are negative. At best, most appear to be lukewarm to the concept even though the sprints have certainly served to add drama to the British and Italian Grands Prix weekends this year.

Human beings as a whole don’t like change, and F1 fans in particular have tended to oppose any dramatic overhauls – and especially gimmicks. That was proven again in the recent F1 Global Survey commissioned by Motorsport Network in partnership with F1 and Nielsen Sports, where sprint race feedback was quite interesting.

There was a 6.7% net approval (those in favour versus those against) that the introduction of sprint races had improved the show – which is less than support for refuelling to return (9.3%) and having a third driver race on a GP weekend (7.7%).

When it came to the debate about whether or not every GP should shift to the sprint format, the response was much clearer. There was a 43% swing against such a move – which was beaten only by more controversial ideas like reverse grids (51.5%) and a total freeze on car design (63.5%).

On the surface, the numbers and a bit of a social media backlash could suggest that F1 is ignoring what the fans are saying and is pushing on with its plans to host six sprints in 2022 regardless. But it’s not quite as simple as that. For F1 managing director of motorsport Ross Brawn, the global picture of what fans want cannot simply be based on the minority who are engaged enough to get involved in social media or complete fan surveys.

“I think in terms of the feedback, I think the people who engage on Twitter or engage in any of those sort of social media, are a pretty avid group of fans,” he told selected media earlier this week.

Ross Brawn, Managing Director of Motorsports

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

“Looking at the numbers, given the millions of fans we have who watch an event, then it's true to say that the fans we have who are so engaged that they enter into social media comments are a relatively small percentage: although an important percentage, don't get me wrong.

“But if you delve down into all the other surveys we do with medium fans and casual fans and all the rest of it, we get very strong positive on this. We all recognise that social media isn't always the best perspective on a sport where we've got 14 million fans watching a race.”

Keeping things as they are in perpetuity, even if it fully satisfied the hardcore fan who hasn’t missed a race in years, makes sense in the short term. But it risks making F1 stale and missing on the opportunity that a new generation of followers offers

Brawn accepts that the more hardcore F1 fan isn’t won over by sprints – but equally says that their resistance to the format isn’t enough that they have turned off in disgust. In fact, he says from the evidence F1 has gathered, the unhappy hardcore are still watching and the new generation, more enthused by the shorter action, are much happier. That is viewed by F1 as a net positive.

“The avid fans, the real dedicated fans, have not been convinced yet,” says Brawn. “They're indifferent to it. But they all watched it by the way. They didn't turn off. They were fascinated by it, but the majority of normal fans, and particularly our new fans, were positive about the concept.

“They particularly like the action on Friday. They felt Friday was now worth watching, which it hadn't been before, and that means we now have a three-day weekend. From a fan perspective, we've had good response. We look at the demographics and we seem to have engaged some more younger and casual audiences with the sprint.”

Brawn is right that, when it comes to gauging an overall picture of fan response, it should take them as a whole. For all sports, especially a global series like F1, there is a need to keep attracting a fresh audience if it is to keep growing and ensure its long term survival. And that means evolving the rules and format.

Keeping things as they are in perpetuity, even if it fully satisfied the hardcore fan who hasn’t missed a race in years, makes sense in the short term. But it risks making F1 stale and missing on the opportunity that a new generation of followers offers.

The US Grand Prix at Austin attracted a sell-out crowd, underlining the virtue of its Drive to Survive docu-series on Netflix

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Where once Bernie Ecclestone said he had no interest in the younger generation because they weren’t the kind of audience F1 needed to sell Rolexes to, Liberty Media has gone in the different direction: getting new younger eyeballs watching is at the top of its list. It’s what the Netflix: Drive to Survive push was about. The resulting boom in audiences worldwide, and especially the USA, has been helped by this: and the sell-out crowd at Austin is proof that F1 is doing things right.

The sprint race debate is incredibly nuanced because it is something so emotive and a break from tradition. The picture is also further clouded by the irony that what we’ve seen so far is that the least exciting point of excitement on a sprint race weekend is actually the sprint itself.

The 100km battle on Saturday has been a bit of a damp squib at both Silverstone and Monza; but its presence has made Fridays much more meaningful and interesting than normal. Plus, it appears that the knowledge of what happens on Saturday has triggered more action on Sundays as teams respond to things they got wrong on the day before.

Brawn admitted that if what has happened so far carries forward – that the sprint races make a better weekend even if Saturday afternoon is not brilliant itself – then he will not have too many complaints.

“Personally I think it is a price worth paying if Saturday is not a sort of crash and bang event,” he said. “I'm not sure it's ever going to be, so I think the overall weekend has improved so much that we would go with that.”

The avid fan resistance to sprints may not be enough to deter F1 from pushing on with the sprints, but Liberty does understand that it cannot go too far and move completely away from its core attractions. That’s why there will not be any major format changes to the idea in 2022. Doing too much, too soon could risk being a turn off to all fans: not just the hardcore ones.

But to steal poet John Lydgate’s words, no format that F1 chooses is ever going to be a universal hit. You can please some of the F1 fans all of the time. You can please all of the F1 fans some of the time, but you can't please all of the F1 fans all of the time.

Daniel Ricciardo took Italian GP victory for McLaren after advancing in the sprint when Lewis Hamilton got a bad start

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images