Does F1 need to shake up its weekend format – and if so, how? Our writers debate

“Things are going very well today, but precisely for that reason we must not rest on our laurels. We need to think about the next step,” Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said ahead of the Italian Grand Prix, underlining the need for the championship to keep exploring the right format.

Alongside the idea of experimenting with the number of sprint events on the calendar, Domenicali also confirmed that the prospect of reverse grids is “on our agenda”.

He further suggested that 300km grands prix may be “a bit too long for younger audiences”, hinting that discussions about shortening race distances could also take place in the not-too-distant future.

While no formal proposals have been tabled, Domenicali’s words were enough to spark fresh debate in Monza last week.

So, does F1 really need to shake up its weekend format? Is there room for more sprints – and is it right to revisit the idea of reverse grids? Our writers share their views.

Randomness not the answer – Filip Cleeren

F1 shouldn’t be making changes for the sake of it, but at the same time rightsholder FOM would be negligent not to at least think about how to make the series more intriguing. So let’s do that.

I was not a big fan of sprints weekends when they first arrived and having worked a lot of them on the ground I still find them pretty rough, despite the format changes. But you can’t deny that they’re a much better reason to tune in than practice sessions, and it’s not hard to see why both promoters and broadcasters love them. Even most of the drivers have come around to embracing them.

Team members of McLaren stand on the grid

Photo by: Bryn Lennon / Formula 1 / Getty Images

I’m hearing that the number of sprints could rise to around 10 per year by the 2027 season, and based on all the evidence on hand I won’t be against that. But what I’m not a fan of is the watered down version of the three-stage qualifying system used in sprint qualifying. Why not try single-lap qualifying? That also gets rid of the traffic problem which is exacerbated by the shortened timespan of the current sprint qualifying segments. I find drivers complaining about being stuck in traffic and/or not getting their tyres in the right operating window very tedious, as valid as those excuses are with these cars. Let’s go one by one, so we get a pure test of skill and speed. If successful, you could even bring it back for the main qualifying session.

Some of Stefano Domenicali’s other suggestions are a bit harder to digest, especially the dreaded spectre of reverse grid races. Let’s just leave that to feeder series. If you need randomness or artificial formats to make your on-track product interesting, then you’ve got a much bigger problem. Fix your on-track product!

Domenicali floating shorter race distances is a bit more interesting, but I don’t think his logic stacks up that the younger generation of fans F1 is attracting is more compelled to watch highlights because of shorter attention spans. Of course, highlights are going to be popular, as not everyone has the time or inclination to watch 24 races live. But I reject the notion Gen Z can’t handle over 90 minutes of live entertainment. Not when football exists, when it’s hard to find any movies in the theatre these days coming in under two hours and when people binge on their favourite series rather than drip feed them.

That doesn’t mean it’s not worth at least investigating, as the Italian Grand Prix lasts 75 minutes and the Singapore race nudges much closer to the two-hour mark. Would Singapore be a better spectacle if it was shorter? Tradition is certainly no object, because the Monaco Grand Prix is already 15% shorter than the usual grand prix distance of 300km plus one lap. But I would argue that if you run fewer laps, you will also have fewer opportunities for those cherished on-track highlights to occur, and you also reduce strategic options unless you force Pirelli into even softer compounds.

I refer to my point on reverse grid. If races become a slog, it’s not because they are too long. It’s because there’s not enough happening on the track, and that’s what you should be focused on.

Could reverse grids make sprints better? – Oleg Karpov

I have to confess – I like the idea of sprints. I just don’t think the current format makes the most of them or adds much value. Buried on a Saturday morning, they feel like a glorified training run that’s forgotten within a couple of hours. Take Lewis Hamilton’s Shanghai sprint win: it was talked about briefly, but quickly overshadowed once the ‘real’ qualifying began.

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

Photo by: Bryn Lennon – Formula 1

For me, sprints should close the Saturday programme. But that immediately raises a problem: do we really want two qualifying sessions, one on Friday and another on Saturday morning? The answer is no.

Here’s my radical suggestion. What if F1 set the sprint grid in reverse championship order, with the points leader starting last? Yes, it’s extreme – but it would inject real jeopardy. Could the frontrunners carve through the field in a 100km race? That’s a genuine test of skill and racecraft, rather than just banking points thanks to the fastest car. At the same time, it gives struggling teams a chance to score more.

F1 has already debated extending points to 12th place to reward those at the back more often. Why not achieve that through sprints? Let midfield and backmarker drivers fight each other for points over shorter distances, while trying to fend off the charge from the title contenders.

And maybe F1 doesn’t need sprints every weekend. What if they ran them, say, once every three races? That way, championship leaders would be rewarded for their overtaking ability, while those further down the order get a fairer shot at points. Traditionalists will hate it. But there’s no denying that these races would add real drama to the show.

Differentiate sprints with a new quali format – Jake Boxall-Legge

As format points go, Formula 1 already has a good balance of sporting integrity and entertainment. I wouldn’t want to tinker with the length of races, nor the current grand prix qualifying format; these offer the right amount of jeopardy without too much in the way of contrivance. So, when I was asked about the idea of format changes, nothing immediately stood out – but equally, nothing is ever perfect either.

I used to hate the free tyre change at red flags rule, and there’s times (Monaco 2024) where it rather kills any notion of racing stone-dead. However, it kept things exciting in Brazil last year and ensured Alpine could get its day of days; sometimes it giveth, sometimes it taketh away.

Esteban Ocon, Alpine F1 Team, 2nd position, Pierre Gasly, Alpine F1 Team, 3rd position, celebrate on the podium

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

What I’d pick as a format change is sprint qualifying. There is very little wrong with the three-stage quali format as-is, but I don’t think sprint races need to do exactly the same, shortened versions of sessions as the full grand prix. Why not roll back the years and try the one-lap shootout format, with the order determined by FP1 results? Or a version of Formula E’s duels format? Or something else entirely different?

If there are going to be more sprint races in the future, let’s at least do something a little bit different with them to make them worth watching. This could extend into the races; why not peg everyone at a maximum of 300kW output from the ERS, and throw the 50kW back in as a push-to-pass add-on to the already-planned overboost?

My real personal preference would be no sprints at all; every race forms part of a two-day weekend, with one practice session before qualifying and the race. But I don’t imagine that would be universally popular…

Why randomising the grids won’t work – Stuart Codling

No less an eminence than Galileo wrote, “This grand book, the universe, is written in the language of mathematics”.

Never has this been more apposite than in the early decades of the 21st century, where large-language algorithms are shaping up to steal our jobs and large swathes of the population are gambling on the value of currencies which exist only as numbers in distributed digital ledgers.

So if maths is the answer to every question, why not set it to work on that thorny problem of keeping F1 relevant to the TikTok generation?

Until the 1933 Monaco Grand Prix, grids were determined by a lottery system rather than practice or qualifying times. There are those who suggest this may be a great way of livening up races today.

Cars line up on the grid for the race start.

Photo by: Mark Thompson – Getty Images

One key objection to this is that randomising the grid is not only a gimmick, it would rob the grand prix weekend of a track session which is in itself entertaining because it has an element of peril. But perhaps, for the edification of the TikTok posse, it could be replaced by an hour of the drivers engaging in Takeshi’s Castle-style physical challenges. Or a custard pie-throwing contest.

Another obstacle to randomising the grid is the thorny mathematical question of how to do it. Ask a computer to generate a series of random numbers and the result will only be pseudorandom.

The process is inherently deterministic because it’s an algorithm. If you hit ‘shuffle’ in Spotify, Apple Music, or whatever, you initiate a distribution algorithm which works from a seed number. So the results are not actually random, even if you perceive them to be.

For a computer to generate a true random number it requires input from an entropy source – typically atmospheric noise.

The exception here is the expanding field of quantum computing. And perhaps there would be a commercial opportunity for F1 to have an official quantum computing partner which produced the random grid. They could even do a live event each weekend.

But even true randomness would crash upon the rocks of human cognitive bias, particularly the phenomenon of apophenia: the human brain’s innate propensity to create order out of chaos. We see patterns where none actually exist. Equally, random sequences can form clusters, in the same way that when you flip a coin it has a 50:50 chance of landing ‘heads’ – and yet you could flip a coin five times in a row and get ‘heads’ on each attempt.

Cars line up on the grid ahead of the race start.

Photo by: Bryn Lennon / Formula 1 / Getty Images

So randomising the grid simply wouldn’t work. Teams – chock full of clever people – would endlessly quibble the methodology, and there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth every time a cluster formed.

Better to determine grids by a custard pie-throwing contest instead, eh?