Horner calls for end to uncertainty on sprint races

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Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has called on the sport's management to make decisions about the use of sprint qualifying races in 2022.

The new format was trialled at three events last season, with conventional qualifying taking place on Friday evening in place of second practice.

That set the starting order for a short half hour sprint race on Saturday afternoon, the result of which in turn decided the starting grid to Sunday afternoon's full-distance Grand Prix race.

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The trials were regarded as a success and Formula 1 bosses said that the trial would continue at six venues in 2022. However there has been no confirmation that this will happen, or at which tracks.

The season opener at Bahrain in less than two months is heavily tipped to stage the sprint race, possibly running on its outer loop circuit.

Others set to run sprint races this year include the Emilia Romagna GP at Imola, the Canadian GP in Montreal, the Austrian GP at the Red Bull Ring, the Dutch GP at Zandvoort, and the Sao Paulo GP in Brazil.

The delay in confirming the plans is believed to stem from teams demanding more money to cover possible damage incurred in the sprint races. It's been reported that Mercedes and Red Bull want an additional $5 million on top of the the existing budget cap.

Other teams including McLaren have criticised such plans, leading to deadlock over whether sprint races will play any part in this year's competition.

Horner said that he wants the sport to make a decision one way or another so that teams can plan accordingly for the new season.

“I think that the sprint races were interesting last year," he told World is One News, a multinational English language news channel headquartered in New Delhi.

“I think the format wasn’t perfect," he admitted. “I’m very much a purist: I believe that qualifying and the race are the fundamental aspects of a Grand Prix.

"But if you don’t try something, you don’t know," he added. "I think there are things that could be done to make it more exciting, to make it more interesting.

“But it’s getting quite late now and we’re going to need to have a decision pretty shortly."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.