Formula 1 drivers have criticised the decision to hold the first sprint event of the season at next week’s Chinese Grand Prix.
The series will return to the Shanghai International Circuit for the first time since 2019. However as sprint weekends include just one practice session instead of the usual three, drivers are concerned there will be too little time to react to any problems with a track it last raced on five years ago.
Carlos Sainz Jnr said drivers warned the authorities that the lack of preparation time could lead to teams setting their cars too low and drivers being disqualified for excessive plank wear. This happened to his team mate Charles Leclerc and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton at the United States Grand Prix last year.
“What we said in the drivers’ briefing, we said to the FIA and Formula 1, with these kind of cars to go to a track with one hour of practice and straight into qualifying, with the regulations that they put us [under], with the plank wear and things like this, and how tricky one bump could make the car, I think it’s not a good choice to choose to [hold a] sprint after four or five years absence,” said Sainz.
He is also concerned that resurfacing work at the track may mean drivers have to cope with extremely low grip levels, as was the case when the series returned to Istanbul Park in 2020.
“We also heard there’s been resurfacing going on, so Istanbul 2.0 maybe on the cards,” Sainz added. “I hope not.”
“It just shows the uncertainty. Maybe for you guys at home it’s exciting, but for engineers and drivers, it’s something that for me, in my opinion, we shouldn’t take the risk and have a normal weekend.”
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Sainz said he wouldn’t be opposed to holding a sprint event at the Shanghai track if drivers had more recent experience of it.
“I think [Shanghai] as a race circuit is a great one,” he said. “I think it’s one of our favourite ones for everyone, it’s just a great racing track and a track that offers a good possibility to overtake, so a sprint makes sense to have it there.”
Sergio Perez pointed out the weekend would be badly affected if the single practice session was affected by a loose drain cover. Similar problems disrupted testing in Bahrain this year and practice for the Las Vegas Grand Prix last November. One of McLaren’s cars was damaged by a drain cover in F1’s second race…
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