Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has slammed the current rules around sprint races in the Formula 1 calendar.
The United States Grand Prix was undermined by the controversy surrounding the parc ferme rules and the sprint race. Both Haas and Aston Martin pulled their cars off the grid at the Grand Prix after not being satisfied with their respective set-ups.
Parc ferme means teams are not allowed to make any changes to their cars following the one practice hour and Friday’s qualifying. Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc were both then disqualified from the race for excessive wear on their planks, with teams believing that was a direct result of the sprint.
Red Bull were not negatively impacted by the rules, with Max Verstappen winning his 15th race of the season. But Horner gave an impassioned take on the rules ahead of Sunday’s Mexican Grand Prix.
“For me, parc ferme is a bit of a joke. You have one session to set your car up, and then the engineers may as well go home at that point,” he told reporters in Mexico. “So, that needs looking at and that I’m sure was a contributing factor to the ride height issues of the teams that fell foul of the regulations. Effectively, it’s just a long run on a sprint race. And there’s no real jeopardy to it, there’s no real incentive behind it.”
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He added: “We should really go to the fans and get their feedback as well. What is it that they want? I think it’d be interesting to look at the data at the end of the year of how popular the sprint race has been because, at the end of the day, it’s all about the fans.
“The reason we do sprint races is to try and provide more entertainment to create a more attractive event. We have to be honest with ourselves at the end of the year when we’ve got all the samples of the sprint races and say: ‘OK, what can we do better? What can be learned? And how can we improve the spectacle?' If the drivers enjoy it and find it rewarding, and the teams find it rewarding, then I think the fans ultimately will.”
Max Verstappen is not a fan of parc ferme (AP)Verstappen may have not been directly affected by the rules in Austin, but he is not a fan of them. He said: “Like I’ve always said: ‘Why? Why do we need to try and invent something?' Our product works if you just make sure the cars are competitive, and the rules stay the same for a long time. Why are we always inventing new things?
“It almost sounds like craziness (to say) that ‘Oh, we need to come up with something’. Just leave it the same. Why do we suddenly need to come up with other things to try and make it entertaining? If you have a good race on your hands with cars close to each other, then you don’t need a Sprint format or weekend.”
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