Max Verstappen criticised Formula 1’s decision to hold a sprint race in Singapore.
The Red Bull driver, who won the first sprint race at the Marina Bay circuit today, said “wou can’t pass” on the track.Verstappen lost his lead from pole position at the start of the race to George Russell. However the Mercedes driver crashed out at the end of the first lap and Verstappen led the rest of the race until the end.
Afterwards Verstappen said Singapore is a poor choice of venue for a sprint race. F1 will increase the number of sprint races from six to ten next year and hold them at other circuits where overtaking is renowned for being difficult, such as Monaco.
“We shouldn’t host a sprint where you can’t pass,” said Verstappen. “You have tracks where you can race and can overtake, but of course, in some places you cannot pass and we are going to have sprints there also next year.”
Verstappen has been one of the most vocal critics of F1’s sprint race format, which has proved divisive among fans. He has also repeatedly drawn attention to the shortcomings of F1’s current power units, which he says make it even harder to pass in Singapore.
“I’m fine, I just do my thing, but it’s not what I like,” he said. “Also the problem we have at the moment is with the Overtake Mode, it barely does anything here. You don’t really gain a lot on the straights.
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“So also that with how all the rules are at the moment with our lovely batteries, it just doesn’t do much. You can’t even get super-close or have a massive overspeed at the moment.”
Although Verstappen said “the track is great” he also suggested the layout needs changes to encourage better racing. “I of course fully agree we need to have a longer straight or more of a proper hairpin to overtake,” he said. “But even with that also, we need a bigger delta [between speeds] on the straight.”
Lewis Hamilton said Saturday’s race would have lacked action if it hadn’t been held in wet conditions.
“I thought it was fun,” he said. “But if it was dry, that would have been probably the most boring race for you to have watched.
“It was the wet, the rain, that made it exciting. So if you can always make it rain, then it’s always going to be a great sprint race. But otherwise, it would probably just have been straightforward tyre management, everyone sticking behind each other.”
Hamilton’s team mate Charles Leclerc also questioned the wisdom of holding sprint races on street tracks. “I don’t think it makes sense to have any sprint races on city tracks in general,” he said.
“We probably should use these sprints to have them on tracks where it’s easy to overtake, where you can have a lot of racing action and it actually adds something to the weekend. Whereas here or Monaco, I don’t think it adds anything to the weekend.”
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