F1 Sprint Qualifying - Time, Date & All You Need To Know

Instead of the three practice sessions we normally have throughout Friday and Saturday, one of the sessions will be sacrificed to hold the sprint qualifying.

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New Delhi: As the world of F1 gears up for its first-ever sprint qualifying race at Silverstone this weekend, here are some of the things that you must know ahead of the highly anticipated event if you haven’t already acquainted yourself with the format….

How will the sessions be structured over the weekend?

Instead of the three practice sessions we normally have throughout Friday and Saturday, one of the sessions will be sacrificed to hold the sprint qualifying. The first practice session will be held on Friday afternoon as usual, with teams expected to run long-run tests and a short-run simulation before the bigger event on Friday evening, which will be the qualifying for the sprint race. This session will be identical to the qualifying that we’ve seen over the years, apart from the fact that teams will be allowed to run only the soft tires, giving them the freedom to then use any compound during the sprint race. The second practice session, on Saturday morning, will offer teams another chance to run their simulations before they turn their attention to the sprint, which will ultimately decide the starting order of the grid for the main race on Sunday.

What exactly is the Sprint qualifying?

The sprint qualifying is, in essence, a shortened version of the main race. The cars will run a little over 100 km, in this case, 17 laps around the track here at Silverstone, which is about a third of the total race distance so should last around 30 minutes. This also frees up the need for cars to pit during the sprint, offering nonstop racing throughout its course. Of course, what this also does, is place extra importance on the 2 practice sessions for teams to determine the favourable choice of tire compound to run the sprint race on, without suffering significant degradation and thus completing the event without pitting. The aim of the sprint race, along with the sprint qualifying, is to offer fans a greater chance of pure and hard racing exhibitions over the course of the whole weekend.

What are the regulation and rule changes that come into play?

To spice things up a bit, the top three finishers of the sprint race would also be in contention to receive points- the winner would receive 3 points and the other runners up 2 and 1 point respectively. Specifically, this would have been crucial for the championship contenders, where each and every point counts and should no doubt make the fight between Hamilton and Verstappen even more exciting. Apart from this, teams would enter Parc Fermé regulations after FP1, and would not be allowed to make major changes to their cars before sprint qualifying later in the day. Cars would then be released from Parc Fermé for the FP2 session, before then being frozen for the rest of the weekend. The teams would also be allocated one set of tires less from 13 to 12 for the weekend, owing to the reduced overall running.