Pierre Gasly appreciates the new Formula 1 sprint weekend format, as he believes it allows the team’s engineers to express their “genius”.
Up until last year, the setup that a driver chose after the FP1 session of a sprint weekend was the one that he had to keep until the end of the race on Sunday. That way, the role of the engineers wasn’t as important as in normal races, as they couldn’t change anything -just a few details- on the car.
Even if it’s true that it meant that sprint weekends were more unpredictable, in case of a bad or wrong setup, a driver or team’s whole weekend was completely ruined already on Friday.
With the new format, FP1 is followed by the shootout and the sprint race. Even though an initial parc fermé remains, the teams can later work on the cars after the sprint, fixing and improving the setup before qualifying and the race on Sunday.
“I think that’s great. I think that was missing, definitely. We ended up last year having amazing, brilliant, genius guys on a Friday afternoon being forbidden to touch anything on our car,” Gasly told Motorsport.com.
“That’s what they are paid for, that’s why they are the best. It was a bit sad because they have much more to bring to the table than just one or two clicks of the front flap and tire pressure.
“F1 is the top of engineering, and I think it’s great we still give them the opportunity to always make these continuous improvements through the weekend.”