Since Liberty Media bought the Formula 1, first with Chase Carey in front, and now with the Italian Stefano Domenicali, one of the main objectives of the company has been to increase the excitement of the highest competition in world motorsport to increase the number of followers in a world with more and more leisure offers. In the first place, they want to achieve this by increasing equality between teams and fights on the track, key goals that are set with the great revolution of the regulations that will come into force from 2022 and the budget ceiling that will already apply from 2021. And now, Liberty continues to study how to improve the spectacle that is lived in the races during an entire weekend of Big prize. A strong change in the weekend model has long been on the table. Last year the possibility of introducing races with an inverted grid was debated, but MercedesA great favorite on all dates, she objected as it clearly affected her. Now the new CEO of Liberty Media, Domenicali, assures several international media such as ‘Racer’ or ‘Motorsport’ that the inverted grid is something that is no longer considered, but that the implementation of a sprint race for Saturday is being studied in order to increase the excitement of the day before Sunday’s big race, currently made up of a free practice session and the fight for pole.
“The idea of the inverted grill is over. It is important to perhaps think of new ideas to be more attractive or interesting, but we do not have to lose the traditional approach to racing. I think we learned it when we changed the qualifying format every two by three and it was something that burned us all. We have to avoid that, and I think that now the format is quite stable ”, commented the head of F1 to the aforementioned media.
“What we are studying is what could be the approach of the so-called sprint race on Saturdays”, revealed the transalpine, also revealing that already from this 2021 some test could be done in this regard.
“We are wondering if this (Saturday’s sprint race) could be tested already this year. There are ongoing discussions with the teams, and I think maybe this could be the only element that could be interesting. “, he added to ‘Motorsport’.