FIA Boss Jean Todt Says F1 Doesn't Need Sprint Races

FIA president and former Ferrari team principal Jean Todt has expressed his concern over sprint races in F1. Sprint races which have been proposed by his former Ferrari colleague Ross Brawn who is the technical chief for F1 are going to be debuted this year with 3 races scaling to 6 by 2022. Todt doesn't agree with his former colleague.

"If you ask me if I'm a big fan of that, the answer is no, I don't think Formula 1 needs it," he said in an interview with Racefans.

However, he also said that he wasn't against the idea of testing new things as long as they didn't clash with the main race on Sunday.

Todt used to be Brawn's boss at Ferrari during the late 90s to late 2000s

"On the other side, if people want to try something, it's not going to hurt the race on Sunday. It will be a different way of having a starting grid on Sunday. So it costs nothing to try," he added.

Ross Brawn has also said that he is open to the idea of dropping the sprint race for 2022 if people don't like it. However, the recent race at Baku which basically had a 2 lap sprint race for the last two laps after a red flag created a lot of excitement.

He also said perhaps it would be a good idea not to call it a race. "We don't call that a race. I have a part of responsibility not calling that a race. For me, the race is on Sunday", said the Frenchman.

The first sprint race will happen at Silverstone during the British GP weekend. There are concerns that the sprint race which is on Saturday will dilute the qualifying season which now moves to Friday. The counter that as many people will be working during the day, it has been given the prime time slot of 6 pm British standard time.