Sprint Weekend Standoff: F1 Negotiates Premiums for 2025 Grand Prix Races?
Apr.15 - A few question marks continue to hang over the newly-announced Formula 1 season calendar for 2025.
Another 24-race calendar awaits next year, with both F1 and the FIA confirming speculation that it will be Melbourne rather than Bahrain that opens the schedule on 16 March - due to Ramadan.
FIA president Mohammed ben Sulayem hailed the better sequencing of the races "through the regionalisation of events", assisting the "health and wellbeing of travelling staff".
According to Auto Motor und Sport, however, there are still some outstanding questions.
"It has not yet been decided where the pre-season testing will take place," correspondent Tobias Gruner said.
"As Bahrain is not the start of the season, it would be advisable to test once again in southern Europe and thus cut costs. But we hear that Bahrain would like to invite the Formula 1 circuit back to Sakhir for testing in February.
"One advantage of that is more consistent weather conditions, but on the negative side, there would be logistical problems with the supply of spare parts."
Another question-mark, Gruner added, are which venues will be assigned 'sprint' weekend format status - with six such weekends likely yet again in 2025.
"F1 authorities are still in negotiations with the individual race promoters," said Gruner.
"As always, the winners will be those races that are willing to pay the biggest premium for the additional action."
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Scrap the sprints. They are a farce, with drivers afraid to push too hard in case their car suffers damage which will be an impediment to the main event and their ability to gain points. Leave the sprints to the electric cars that need new batteries!
Totally agree! Leave on the scrapmachine for the heavy stupid batteries too and give back to the mighty V10's and grid girls!
Thats right, you want to see F1's popularity explode. Quit acting like its a green sport and pretending to be politically correct. Open up the grid to more teams and innovation, cubic inches and cylinders (run what ya brung) quit limiting and penalizing parts and tire usage and of course bring back those beautiful grid girls.
As Ramadan commences on February 28 next year, Bahrain could indeed only hold pre-season testing earlier in that month, meaning at least around three weeks before the opening round.
I thought this article had already come, but while he & Sainz made good points in the press conference, on the other hand, F2 drivers only get a single practice session, even when they're driving on a circuit for the first time, like some in Melbourne or other non-European circuits over the years, so I'm sure the experienced F1 drivers will be alright, & even the four who haven't driven in Shanghai (or competitively in Zhou's case) yet, despite being in a more disadvantaged position.
Disregard this writing, I meant to post it elsewhere, but forgot to switch sites, so it inadvertently ended up here.
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