This weekend’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix features a sprint race, but how does a sprint work and how does that affect the weekend’s schedule?
This weekend’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix will host the fifth out of six sprint weekends throughout the season's calendar. Other sprints have been hosted this year at China, Miami, Belgium, and Austin, and the sixth sprint will be hosted at Qatar.
A sprint race weekend changes the format of the weekend. A typical race weekend features Free Practice One and Two on Friday, Free Practice Three and Qualifying on Saturday and the race on Sunday. A sprint weekend gives the teams only one Free Practice on Friday instead of the typical three. Friday also features the Sprint Qualifying to set the grid for the sprint race on Saturday. Saturday first has the Sprint race, then later in the day has Qualifying for the main race, which occurs on Sunday as normal.
Sprint Qualifying is practically identical to race qualifying, just with shortened intervals. SQ1 lasts 12 minutes and at the end of the time the bottom five are knocked out. For SQ2, only 15 drivers remain. They set in their time for ten minutes before the bottom five are once again knocked out. SQ3 features the top ten where they, for eight minutes, have a shootout for who will get pole position for the race. Because Sprint Qualifying has shorter times, it puts the pressure on the drivers to put out their fastest time in just one go, because they don’t typically have the time for a take two. Fresh tires are also mandatory for each run because they aren’t changing them for a second run. Teams must use medium tires for SQ1 and SQ2 and soft tires for SQ3.
The Sprint Race itself covers 100km, about a third of a typical Grand Prix, and lasts around 30 to 60 minutes. For Brazil, the sprint is 24 laps long as it is a shorter track. There are no mandatory pit stops in a sprint race as they aren’t long enough to need a change of tires. Venues are chosen if they have good overtaking potentials and dynamic racing. The Sao Paulo Grand Prix Circuit is well known for its dynamic and fun to watch racing, so making it a sprint weekend makes it even more interesting.
Points are awarded to the top eight finishers instead of the top ten as in the typical race. 1st place is awarded eight points, 2nd is awarded seven points, and so on down to 8th who gets one point.