The Formula 1 Commission has recently introduced a plan to have extra races on Saturdays at three rounds this season. Sebastian Vettel, who previously said this move ‘made no sense’, continues to be skeptical.
The official reason to introduce this plan was to make the races more exciting, but Vettel has his doubts about this.
“We need to see,” said Vettel. “Obviously it’s decided so we’ll give it a go.
“The reasoning behind this, there’s probably two ways to explain it, but the official one is that it should be more exciting. We’ll see if it’s more exciting. I hope it is.”
Vettel also said that if this does not get the expected results, then F1 should be prepared to abandon it.
“If it turns out to be more exciting and the people like it, then maybe we’ll all have to sort of reset and adapt.
“If they don’t like it and we don’t like it then we should go back. I’m generally against creating a mess on purpose, otherwise you just might roll the dice.
“But we’ll see. Hopefully the cars get closer and closer to each other so we don’t need to think about more of these things. But as I said, now I’m pretty open and we’ll see how it turns out.”
Vettel’s former teammate Charles Leclerc was on board with the new sprint qualifying. However, he felt that this should not become a distraction from the main event on Sunday.
“I’m quite happy that we are trying this,” said Leclerc. “I think it’s good that we have three Grands Prix where we’ll try this.
“The important thing is that it doesn’t devalue the Sunday event, which is the main race, and this should remain the main race.
“But to have a sprint race might be interesting. We’ll see also the cars be pushed to the max from the first lap to the last lap, which which will be nice for us drivers.”
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