Why Max Verstappen is right about the BIG problem facing F1 right now

When Max Verstappen holds a strong on view any given matter, he isn’t often shy about letting the world know.

The double world champion was in particularly forthright and feisty mood in Azerbaijan over the weekend, as Formula 1 returned following its unanticipated four-week spring break for the fourth round of the 2023 campaign.

As well as branding George Russell a “d***head*” in a heated row after the Mercedes driver made contact with Verstappen’s RB19 in the sprint race, hindering the championship leader’s pace and preventing him from passing Charles Leclerc for second place, Verstappen gave a scathing assessment of F1’s latest scheduling rejig.

“Just scrap the whole thing,” he raged when asked about the overhauled sprint weekend format in Baku. “I would say I got bored through today’s qualifying, to be honest.”

The schedule shift was formally agreed by all ten teams only last week, rendering the sprint a standalone event on Saturday afternoon with its own qualifying session a few hours prior, and leaving the starting grid for Sunday’s grand prix set by Friday’s qualifying alone.

Reducing the number of practice sessions and putting on more competitive events across the course of a race weekend allows F1 to theoretically draw in a bigger audience and increase the value of the product it sells to broadcasters, sponsors, and advertisers.

The logic is there, but Verstappen is right that in reality the format isn’t working as things stand. The action in Baku, an often thrilling circuit popular with fans and drivers alike, was severely lacking in the very excitement F1 believes the sprint format should be provide.

F1's big dilemma

The crux of the debate around whether sprint races are worthwhile has often been philosophical: should F1 position itself more as traditional sport or pivot towards eccentric entertainment?

Right now though, the sprint format isn’t really doing either of those things. With the additional qualifying and race events simply being shortened versions of their ‘real’ counterparts, the sprint merely offers more of the same but in a shorter timeframe. The same running order, the same protagonists, the same storylines.

The sprints are not bestowing anything unique, refreshing or liable to appeal to different kinds of audiences upon the F1 calendar, while also having the potential to undermine the main event on Sundays, because the action and end result on a Saturday are likely to be very similar indeed.

Therefore, F1 needs to decide what it is aiming to do with sprint races. Is it trying to shake things up at any cost to offer something truly different, and if so should it fully embrace wacky gimmickry like reverse grids or randomised starting orders? Or is the plan more about ensuring exciting racing in a traditional sense, and if so is there an alternative solution to just dropping extra bonus races into a grand prix weekend and hoping for the best?

READ MORE: Verstappen is BEATABLE, Red Bull record and F1 flop facing shock axe? What we learned in Azerbaijan

F1 could lean into the chaos and decide to go with the former, but the contrived creation of excitement is never as hair-raising as the natural thing. Verstappen himself made clear what he sees as the way forward when delivering his verdict on the changes made for Azerbaijan.

“I think it’s just important to go back to what we have, and make sure that every team can fight for a win,” the Dutchman said. “That’s what we have to try and aim for and [not] try to implement all this kind of artificial excitement.”

And therein lies the problem F1 is fighting against: Verstappen’s own Red Bull team is completely eviscerating the competition, meaning only one team is capable of winning races right now, never mind ten.

A grand prix weekend with just one race, but crucially in which three or four teams are able to seriously challenge each other out front, would provide the kind of variety and shifts in storyline that the sprint race is unable to supply in its current form.

But the fact that Red Bull have ended up dominating out front to such an extent after F1 brought about a regulation change designed to draw the field closer together and allow drivers to race one another more closely only demonstrates just how difficult it is to engineer a status quo whereby multiple teams are able to truly compete for victories.

For now then, F1 will persist with its new sprint format and hope the quality of the action improves in the five further running before the end of 2023. Though Verstappen’s spikiness may not always be fully thought through or well-placed, the vehement opposition of the sport’s foremost driver should give its decision-makers cause to consider a more sustainable long-term path to consistently compelling racing.

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