If there is one quality to Formula 1’s controversial sprint round format that even its critics cannot deny, it is that the lack of practice and preparation teams get before the competitive sessions certainly helps to add intrigue over a race weekend.
The next time the 20 drivers head out onto the Shanghai International Circuit on Saturday, it’ll be for a 100 kilometre sprint race. Many of them will do so less prepared than they’ve ever been for a race in Formula 1 – especially the six having their first taste of this track in a grand prix car.
A brief interruption due to the grass on the inside of turn seven igniting meant teams didn’t quite get a full hour of practice running in at the start of Friday in dry conditions. That plus most of the first phase of qualifying was all the dry running most of them had. But while an hour-and-change might be enough running for a typical player on F1 23 to get ready for a race, it’s far less than a multi-million pound professional F1 team would want.
The challenge is even greater this weekend, for two main reasons. First, the most recent data from Shanghai that teams have available to help guide them is at least five years old now, run on a different generation of car with a drastically different aerodynamic concept. Second, the circuit they have returned to made have not changed in layout, but the asphalt and the grip level offered up by it is drastically different.
If it was a typical race weekend at circuit with these characteristics, drivers would expect to benefit from major track evolution across three hours of practice and a qualifying session before the race. They would also have refined their car set-ups and have plenty of data for each of the three compounds, but most teams have neither of those.
Several teams – Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, Aston Martin, RB and Alpine – only ran the mediums for the first time in SQ1. The Mercedes drivers, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, and Fernando Alonso still haven’t touched their soft tyres yet, and must now decide what compound they will commit to for the 19 laps of the sprint race.
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Pirelli expect the mediums to be the default choice for the first race of the weekend. “The medium is clearly destined to be used in both tomorrow morning’s sprint race and Sunday’s grand prix,” said the tyre manufacturer’s chief engineer, Simone Berra.
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