Ross Brawn confirms F1 intention to increase up of Sprint weekends

Ross Brawn has confirmed that Formula 1 is discussing the potential to bring in six Sprint weekends from as early as next season.

The first Sprint of the season is has taken place at Imola, with Max Verstappen overtaking Charles Leclerc in the final laps on Saturday to take the victory and set himself up to start from P1 on Sunday for the full Grand Prix.

It’s the first of three Sprint events planned this year – the same number as in 2021 – but Brawn has revealed that it is F1’s intention and hope to try and up things to six from next season.

Brawn was in attendance at Imola and told the gathered media, including Give Me Sport, post-Sprint that it was his intention to try and double the amount of Sprints on offer from 2023.

“We want to discuss increasing it to six for next year,” Brawn said.

“I think [the teams] can see the success. I think we didn’t know quite where we were with the old cars last year but I think they can see the way this year is feeding into the new cars and the philosophy so I’m optimistic they’ll see the value in it.

“What you should always remember about the Sprint is it gives you a great Friday as well, we have qualifying on the Friday so we have three days of action for the fans and we can’t ignore that.”

Certainly, the format provides extra racing action and that can only be a good thing for both the drivers and the watching fans.

As Brawn says, it also gives three days of meaningful action with qualifying moved to a Friday, and so we could see more of that in 2023.

More discussions are set to take place next week over the plans, then, but it is at least clear what Brawn would like to do with the new format moving forwards.