F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali made headlines earlier in the year claiming it would be “wrong” not to think about making changes to the F1 race weekend format as audiences continue to rise.
Domenicali shook up the format by adding three sprint races to the calendar in 2021. Three more were added ahead of 2023, but the F1 commission took the matter one step further. Now the sprint events would lose not only the second practice session on Friday, but final practice on Saturday too. The addition of another competitive session now left just a single hour of practice in Baku.
At ordinary race weekends drivers continue to have three, one-hour practice sessions. The single hour available at sprint events is a significant reduction, and even more compared to 2020, when the first two sessions were 90 minutes long, allowing a total of four hours practice time per event.
Practice sessions may not be thrilling but they are key for teams. The drivers use the sessions to get a feel for the track and have a short window to work on their race and qualifying simulations, whilst the teams can test new parts and set-up changes ahead of the all-important qualifying session which usually takes place on a Saturday afternoon.
With just one hour of running before qualifying in Azerbaijan, many teams were caught out by the limited running. From Ferrari to Haas, many teams struggled to get all the information they needed from the single-hour session, and went into the weekend with compromised set-ups.
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jnr, who qualified fourth for Sunday’s race, eighth-tenths of a second behind his pole-winner team mate, felt the “hectic” session and lack of track time left them on the back foot as he was unable to make many changes to his car.
“It put me under stress obviously for Q1 which put me under stress for Q2 with less tyres for Q3,“ explained Sainz on Friday after qualifying. “It was a hectic day for me, always trailing, always one step behind. But it’s my fault and in the end, we will have a look at what we could’ve done better. I didn’t enjoy today and hopefully the parc ferme rule doesn’t influence me too much.”
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Sainz’s weekend never recovered from that point onwards as he laboured to gain confidence in his SF-23. Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said Sainz’s start to the weekend left him chasing his tail all weekend.
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