P1 with Matt and Tommy - F1 announces SPRINT SHOOTOUT format

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

Baku will feature TWO qualifying sessions this weekend as F1 reveals a new Sprint Shootout format for Sprint race weekends. Follow us on socials! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and TikTok.***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!*** Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everybody and welcome back to the P1 podcast with Matt and Tommy. Tommy was waving, but I don't think the wave actually makes the YouTube video ever. So just think about all those loft lost waves that were never seen. Apart from me, I've absorbed every single one of them. It's just for you. I'm waving back right now. Today, F1 has announced some big sprint changes. they have, they've decided to grab that entertainment,

what I'm going to call it a valve, no, I'm going to call it like some sort of like, you know how you turn it like a volume button, you know what I mean? The entertainment knob. Knob, I didn't want to call it that, but here we are. And they've turned it up to 10 and they've gone,

yes, entertainment is what we want during sprint race weekends because the new sprint weekend format goes as follows. On Friday, FB1 and qualifying for the Grand Prix. Saturday is Sprint Day. It's the Sprint Shootout, basically qualifying but slightly shortened, and the sprint race. On Sunday, we have the Grand Prix as normal. It's, I think we'll then discuss sprint shootout format, 12, 10 and 8 minutes being the three qualifying sessions, and medium, medium soft tyres having to be used in the first.

each. So medium for Q1, medium for Q2 and soft for Q3, which is, there's a lot of information to process here, Tommy. Yes, there is a lot of information. I guess the main reason here is the fact that FP2 was hated on. It was kind of pointless for the sprint stuff because you just had that weird session after qualifying where there's a practice session. And yeah, it's just we've had this now new sprint shootout. But yeah, the format is certainly a weird one, particularly with the tires. It certainly is.

Now, you might be wondering if you're watching on YouTube why I'm wearing an alpine top. Well, today's been busy. Me and Tommy went to Endstone to film with Estebanok on, a podcast and also a standalone video as well, both coming to the channel in the next week or two. The audio pod's actually going out tomorrow. So hopefully you've already enjoyed that.

Maybe. Actually, you wouldn't have enjoyed that if you're watching this on YouTube because this is going out today. But yes, little signed bit as well. Yeah, having a great time. So, yeah, we literally got home as the Sprint News was announced. And I haven't had time to change. But I actually quite like this Alpine Top and we had a great day, didn't we, Tommy?

We had a fantastic day. And Formula One, all I'll say is, come on, make your schedule around us. Yeah, you had a month. The one day, the one day we ventured outside for P1, and that's the time we decided to drop some news. we were starving for a month of something to talk about. So starving. And now we're gobbling. We're feasting right now, aren't we, Tommy?

We really are. So let's break this down then. Okay. So how I see this is that we now have two race weekends in a race weekend, in a sprint race weekend, that is. We have qualifying for the Grand Prix on the Friday, which I think is going to be the main annoyance, or continued annoyance for Formula One fans that are working,

that might not be able to catch something on the Friday, because that is the most important qualifying of the two. The Saturday one, of course, is the sprint shootout slash qualifying, the one that we just mentioned with the format. And that's the one where you'd like to think. A lot of people will be able to tune into, as it is on the Saturday. And then you have the sprint race later on. And then the Grand Prix is, of course,

what happens from the Friday qualifying rather than anything to do with the sprint race. So we do genuinely have two opportunities for Max to win comprehensively. And one thing I would say as well is if you are a casual fan, which is what this kind of presents itself to be, right? The people that don't want to sit through loads of practice sessions and just watch the really exciting entertainment sessions, you'd argue that actually you now dedicate more of your Saturday than you do the Sunday because you,

you've got to tune in for two very meaningful sessions, whereas on the Sunday, there's only one. So that's going to be quite a strange thing that dare I admit and call me a casual fan. But since we've started this new venture, I've enjoyed not having to care too much about FP3 and just have a bit of a Saturday morning and then settle down for qualifying. but now you've got this super important session. So if you want to have a social life on Saturday, it's now a write-off. It's a weird one because it's definitely the most amount of entertainment in the sense of like... Oh, 100%.

Yeah, for a weekend. And it's not the most important in terms of the championship, but it's the most important about the fact that you wouldn't want to miss it, right? You've got four of five headline sessions, whereas you'd argue on a normal Formula One race weekend, you've got two. Two. That's very true. So I think I'm going to not give too much in terms of my set in stone opinion because I need to see how this will actually work out in Baku this weekend. But I do wonder if that does take away a little bit from the Sunday Grand Prix, which is supposed to be the highlight, the standout event. and instead Saturday seems to be that one that's just going to be absolute craziness. Like the Sprint Shootout, for example, we've mentioned.

Tires need, like medium tires need to be used in Q1 and Q2 and Q3 soft tires. Now, I don't know if they have one, two sets of tires, three sets of times. I don't think that's actually been clarified yet as far as I've seen, which is insane because it's Baku this weekend and you'd think that all of this information would be readily available to all of us. Yeah, they were only voting on it today. So they've come back. They've had an entire off season.

Yeah, and it's not like a summer shutdown, is it, where no one's around. They've had the time to vote, and they're just going to go straight into this and go, yeah, cool, okay. My first kind of initial thoughts, the thing that scares me the most, and Formula One teams voted and agreed for this, so they're no better. better than I do. Sometimes. Sometimes.

And this probably won't happen, and I've got nothing to worry about. But the first thing that really jumped out on me was eight minutes in Q3. Now, that for me, they've reduced the time of the sprint shootout format because they realize that, you know, Formula One parts and they've got to last a whole season, so you don't want to have loads of really long sessions again. So they've kind of reduced it. But for me, eight minutes is borderline too long for one lap shootout and too short for a two-lap shootout like we normally get. So my first thought is a little bit concerned that we might end up with an elimination qualifying style failure where everyone goes out at the start of the session.

You do one lap and then everyone realizes that there's not enough time to go out again. Or you just get five minutes of the start of the session where everyone's just sat in the pits waiting for the end. So that concerns me a little. The one track, let's not forget, that's on here, is Belgium. That's a sprint weekend. Yep. It's a sprint weekend. So to confirm the sprint venues this year are Baku, Azerbaijan, Austria, Rebel Ring, Belgium, Spa, Qatar,

Qatar, the sale circuit, the United States at the Circuit of the Americas and Sao Paulo in Telago. Now I think the eight minutes might just be perfect for a one lap shootout if it's around spa because it's a one minute 40 or lap time. And of course you have to have an in and an out lap around that as well. I don't know. I don't think I'm as concerned as you are about this being some sort of like non-crescendo that it could well be. I feel as though if anything, it might actually turn up the carnage somewhat because I think you might have some drivers that will want to rush round, set a lap, get in and then come out again for their second lap, whereas some may not be able to do that if they don't have track position.

So it could be the case of like, this sprint shootout becomes a mini race just to get around the track, get in and have another go. Maybe this is Formula One's way to have three races in secret. I don't. Yeah, yeah, true. So maybe this is just me. If you listen to our qualifying podcast, we went through the history, you know that me and you are both, we're very much on board of a one lap quality like we had in 2003 for this. If the whole point is the, oh, it's exciting because they're only going to get one run,

personally, I would like to see in Q3, they just go out in order of what it was in Q2. that top 10 with the person in first in Q2 goes out last, and the person that just got through goes out first, and you get to watch every single lap, and then people just do one lap. I wonder if the reason they don't do that is because of time. Yeah, because you will have, let's say, a minute 30 for a lap. You'll have the outlap for that first driver, which is a minute 30,

then you'll have them do a lap, and then obviously the other car. You're probably looking about 20 minutes half an hour. Yeah, at least I think it'd probably be around, yeah, around the sort of 25 minute mark. So I wonder if because of that, and then they have to have a three-hour window, don't they, or something between sessions. So I wonder if there is some of that as much as, I don't know, 20 minutes here and there, does that really matter in the grand scheme of things if they actually wanted to get this right?

Who knows? But if anything, I would just have five minutes for Q3. Everyone barrels out, has one lap, and then we're done. But yeah, yeah, it's half an hour, isn't it? So you essentially got half a qualifying as well. but still it's going to take time out of people's days and stuff I don't know why the medium tyres in Q1 and Q2

we need to explore this what does this mean surely you'd go like Q1 hards Q2 mediums Q3 softs if we're going to have a variable every session but it seems to say maybe Pirelli have gone I'm not sure about softs in every single session please can we use our mediums I don't know and maybe it's just to save some soft tires for the actual qualifying.

What about the hard? That would be more entertaining if they do qualifying on the hards, in my opinion. Yeah, yeah, because you might get something a bit different if a team isn't very good on the hard tires.

Yeah, I'm part of me, yeah, I think my first thoughts on it are that maybe it's an extra session. Don't get me wrong. You know how much I want to see less practice, so this is a good thing. But I'd maybe like to have seen a bit more jeopardy. I just feel like this is the, I mean, it fits the bill, that it's the sprint equivalent

of qualifying because it's a shorter one where you could argue it might not necessarily be as exciting or mean as much. So it fits with the whole sprint thing because in my opinion the sprint is a shortened race that's less exciting and doesn't mean as much. It's going to be weird as well having seen qualifying for the Grand Prix, which is the longer, more meaningful. More meaningful session and then into Saturday we have the exact same thing we saw at the end of Friday but shorter but shorter and we kind of already know the results like in some ways we're sort of we're getting yeah because if it doesn't rain you kind of know the order right yeah so you're like oh along like I don't know Aston martin are the second best car this weekend so you know when

you go into the sprint that they're going to they should be third in theory third and fourth on the grid so yeah you do get a bit of spoiler that I guess the one positive thing, if we want to put a positive on, is that the qualifying, a proper qualifying session decides the grid on Sunday, which for the stat people, that was always confusing that what's the pole position? Is it when you win the sprint or is it when you do qualifying? That kind of clears it up now because it's just qualifying for the Grand Prix. but yeah there's a few questions that I totally agree with that goes into why it's a bit crap for certain teams yeah for sure I think I'm willing to give it a go I can't give a fully a fully measured approach to

this until I've actually seen it unfold maybe not even just a Baku because Baku could very much give us absolute carnage for every single day this week and we go this is the greatest thing since sliced bread but until we maybe get into a more normal circuit, that's when we can properly judge it. We actually went on Twitch a little bit earlier and got people to vote about how they fell out of 10 towards the new sprint format. And the most popular one was 38% voted either a 5 or 6 out of 10. 37% voted at 7 or 8 out of 10. And then we had smaller percentages for the extremes each way. So it's leaning towards more positive. And I can understand that. I think that we've started this podcast very much as a, well,

this is a bit rubbish, isn't it? When I actually, we're more just kind of dissecting and going, how do we make this a 10 out of 10 rather than this is rubbish? I'm not saying it's terrible. I'm not looking forward to this. It's all right. Because I am. I'm actually, I think this would be better than having to endure an FP2

that means absolutely nothing, like even less than before, where qualifying's done. They're literally going out there to find out how long the tyres last. And it is pointless. So yeah, so I'm absolutely willing to give it a shot, and I think that it could be very interesting. I think the Sprint shootout, the choices of tyres there is a little bit strange. Let's move into the first question. It comes in from M. Sully 98. I like the idea. But is there any way they can make the sprint count into the race weekend? If not, why does the driver even care showing up to the sprint if it might ruin their car before Sunday?

Seems like high risk, no reward for most of the drivers and teams. Now, it's probably worth. mentioning that the points haven't changed. So it's eight all the way down to one for the top eight and no more points after that. So it does open up a big question of why would Alpha Tauri bother even racing or even, you know, why would they even use their allocation of parts? Now, also worth mentioning at this point that the allocation of a few of the, you know, the ICE and the power unit, etc., they've all been increased by one. But the control electronics, which is one of which Charlerclair has already used three of, and you're only allowed to use two over the course of the whole season,

has not changed. So you still are only allowed two. Just had to make it more painful for a Ferrari, didn't they? Yep. Yeah. Yeah, this is the thing that stands out to me is that the fact that if you qualify 19th, the sprint, at least you know if there's some collisions or whatever,

you will keep racing. and even if you finish 10th and don't get a single point, you're starting the Grand Prix and 10th. But I guess, I guess a race like backer, you hope there's so much carnage that you might get a point. But yeah, it does feel a little bit pointless for those at the back. Maybe just read the next question just for the sake of... Yeah, let's do it.

Jones underscore RF 873 says, is the sprint now a waste for slower teams? feels that way. Yeah, I would say so. I mean, has it always been a waste, I would argue? Has it ever been the top eight scoring points? Has that ever been good for a team that's right at the back? No, because there's never enough carnage for it to unfold.

So I don't think that's particularly changed. The only thing, of course, is the fact the sprint is its own isolated thing, but let's not forget that the cost cap still exists. It's not like the teams are going, have a go. Just send it. Send it. It doesn't matter if you completely explode your car, we'll get another one for Sunday. One is a huge reparation job if you do wreck your car on Saturday for Sunday, but also

that $145 million or whatever it is now, because I know they incrementally changed it. It's still there. And it costs a lot of money to repair a fully damaged Formula One car. So I imagine for those backrunning teams, still, it'll be a case of, well, unless you are, you know, maybe skirting around the 10th, 11th, 12th, mark. it's not really much point. And they might even turn into, I would argue, these sprint races as a kind of a practice session

for the eighth, ninth, tenth, slowest teams. Yeah. They can just go around and do laps and get ready for Sunday. Yeah, that's true. A strange way of seeing it. But yeah, this is the big con, I think, that the back teams don't really have much to fight for. Like literally nothing to fight for

because they don't even get a good place on the grid. they miss out on points. So, yeah, it's disappointing for them. And it'd be interesting to see how they approach it. I know when they first introduced like parts where they were limiting parts, there was a whole talk around would the back market team just pull into the pits at the end of the race when they knew they weren't going to get a point and just save the engines. I'm sure there must have written some kind of rules against it.

I'm wondering now. And I'm working at my thoughts as we go along, literally quite on this podcast right now. So with the sprint weekend, now having, there isn't that feeling of progression throughout the weekend, right? It is literally two race weekends. It doesn't matter what happens in the sprint. It's not going to affect the race weekend. Does that kind of put Saturday in jeopardy somewhat in terms of if it doesn't work, if it's not

as exciting, do people just not bother watching Saturday because there's only eight points on the line and qualifying is this shorter format of qualifying they've already seen on the Friday. I'm posing the question. It's what I've just popped into my head is that they might actually run the risk of making Saturday less important for people to watch. Yeah, that's true. Could have the opposite effect of what they want, which would be the fact that the sprint format actually, like you say, makes people really want to watch qualifying because that is now, you You know, you could argue that the old sprint format, it's so weird this because there's so many pros and cons of each thing. Every time they change it, you go, oh, this is better. But then,

you know, because I was like, oh, the qualifying for Friday is better because it now decides the grid. But then that makes now Friday a really important qualifying session that you really don't want to miss. But then people are, the whole complaint was that people are at work. Whereas when you had the qualifying there, it worked, it worked well because you at least knew that at least if you watch the sprint, you know what the qualifying order is going to be. I completely agree, Frank. Honestly, you are getting so involved in this podcast in the background. I can just hear the chaos of Frank and Grace.

Grace has just come in and Frank's going crazy. Frank's so, oh, I'm so glad you're home again. Okay, final question comes in from Anax underscore MaxTech. Do you believe the sprint format is better now since the whole point of qualifying is the race order and now the sprint quali slash race has nothing to do with it. Lots of pros and cons. I think, again, it depends what you like. If you didn't want the traditional format to be touched, this is great, because you still get that,

even if it is on a Friday and then a Sunday. But if you were a reasonable fan of the sprint race format and enjoyed the fact that there was this jeopardy of qualifying into the sprint race, and if something crazy happened, you then go into the main race with perhaps slightly different order. But then on the argument for that is that actually the sprint race allowed for people that messed up qualifying to get into a better position for the race. For me, do I believe it's better now? There's one less practice session.

So I think on paper, I think we'll enjoy it more. Whether it will actually be better, I think we're just going to have to weigh. and see. Yeah, this is a really difficult one because I have been the biggest flag bearer for get rid of practice sessions and have more meaningful sessions, but now we've actually got it. I think this is the problem. I just don't think it is the perfect solution. So the pros is for someone, and this is the thing, it's for someone like us that consumes

as much Formula One and it's, you know, it's our, it's our passion, but also I. job. So we've got... From FPP on a Saturday morning, exactly. We've heard that you just like to do a little on the house. But this is the thing. It's great to have more meaningful sessions,

but there will be some people that, yeah, I think what you said is a really interesting concept, actually, that could the Saturday have the opposite effect where you go, you know what? I'm not even going to watch sprint qualifying. I'll find out what the result is. I want to have a bit more of my Saturday.

And especially if we get to the point, I wonder if they'd change it again if maybe the first three sprints end up a procession. And then you get to the point where the sprint has no redeeming qualities whatsoever other than just they qualify and they finish in the order that they've qualified in. So then you could argue what's the point of qualifying? Because then you're just running a mini race where everyone just stays in the same order and all that really the only bit of jeopardy is that rolling start.

Yeah, it is really a case of we're going to have to wait and see, but the thing with always is these things is some Formula One races are good and some Formula One races are bad. So Baku could be the greatest thing in the world and have this whole format and Formula One would love it, but then we could go to spa

and it'd be absolutely boring. So you just never know. Absolutely. And you kind of touched, upon it as well the Saturday requiring quite a bit of time from people. Two different times of day as well,

you'd have to imagine with a few hours in between. When are us F1 fans going to be able to go outside? Not that I particularly ever like going outside, but that's also an interesting thing is that maybe Formula One have gone, hello, chiching, dollar eyes mojis through their eyes

because they're essentially creating two programs on one day. That's got to be Will Barrow's a cash straight to the bank. Yeah. And then when we had our qualifying podcasting, and we went through the history of Formula One. And one thing we mentioned was that when they did the one-lap shootout, they had two sessions on a Saturday,

but the first one was kind of pointless. I think it's going to be fascinating to see what the viewing figures are like for the race weekend and how it differs whether people, I'm very curious to know, actually, the viewing figures from the evening Friday qualifying session that matters a lot to the Saturday sprint qualifying, which on theory is a better day for viewership because it's on a Saturday, but is less important. I think that's going to be really interesting to see the viewing figures whether we get that information released. And they better not tot it up and make it sound like Saturday is the greatest thing since sliced bread because they have two different

sessions. Three billion people tuned in to Saturday because we had two different sessions. Yeah. And equally, them basically taught up the viewing figures. And of course, they're going to have more views on four sessions. Yeah. Instead of two. Of course.

Everyone loves the sprint. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. That's commercial business for you. That's how they get more Mullah. But that's really interesting. This will evolve. And I'm sure we will come back to this and discuss what was it like at Baku and maybe

how it can be improved. Before we go, Tommy, what is your ideal format? I think I'm still just sad that we didn't get the one lap shootout in Q3. There were rumours that that could be the case. We might still get it, kind of. Kind of, but they'll all be on track

potentially at the same time. And the one thing I liked about one lap quality is the fact that you've got to see everyone's lap, whereas now we might get a case where everyone, because they all love to get on track at the same time, don't they, even though they always complain about traffic, but they all love to get on track at the same time, and then we'll just see eight minutes

where we'll probably maybe only see, like, Verstappen on a hot lap, and then as he crosses the line, we see three seconds of everyone else that crosses the line after him. So, yeah, it's a very weird one, but I think the answer to the question of, like, what we think is, I don't really know until I see it,

because this has been one of those things where I should be want to, you know, jump on Twitter and go, oh my God, this, this and this. But actually, I'm just kind of not underwhelmed, but just a bit like, okay, we'll see how it goes. And I think it's a fair way to look at it is let's just give it a go. Let's not jump to conclusions and see if this format actually works. Maybe this whole medium, medium soft thing in SQ1 and SQ2 and SQ3 will actually be an unbelievable way of doing qualifying. have to wait and see. Tommy, final thoughts, sir?

My final thoughts are, happy birthday, Frank. Thanks for interrupting the podcast for the 100th time. I love how you either use your dog now as noises down the microphone or you wish him happy birthday. Hey, it's a birthday. Fair enough. My final thoughts are I cannot wait for Formula One

to finally be back. We'll be live on Twitch, Friday, Saturday and Sunday for your viewing pleasure whilst we watch Ferrari and whatever they end up doing. although I am now an Alpine fan if you are watching on YouTube and we'll see you very soon for another video or podcast. Bye!

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