Sky Sports pundit proposes second F1 championship after Verstappen quit threat
Sky Sports pundit David Croft has called for Formula 1 to introduce a Sprint world championship alongside the main competition, despite reigning champ Max Verstappen having spoken out against the format.
Verstappen holds a 125-point lead in the overall standings in 2023, as he chases a third straight drivers' title. The Dutchman has won 10 of this season's 12 races, finishing second behind his Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez on the other two occasions.
The Sprint format was introduced in 2021, and takes place at only a handful of stops. Verstappen has dominated there as well, winning five out of the nine Sprints so far, but has hit out at the repeated changes to the calendar.
Verstappen has even suggested he could be encouraged to quit Formula 1 if more and more tweaks are made. However, Croft, who covered Formula 1 for the BBC before moving over to Sky, has proposed a solution.
"I think the Sprint concept is good, I like it, but I don't like it being part of the world championship," Croft told the Sky Sports F1 podcast. "I'd like two separate world championships, like cricket has T20, ODIs and Test match, and we'll keep them separate.
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"Have your Sprint day on a Friday maybe, rather than the Saturday. You could go into Sprint qualifying and then the Sprint, with maybe a 20-minute warm up in the morning - that's your Friday.
"And then the cars are not in parc ferme for the rest of the weekend, because you then have your practice session on the Saturday morning, Saturday qualifying and then the race on Sunday. So you're keeping the two very separate for different world championships."
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Sky Sports commentator David Croft (Sky Sports)Speaking after the most recent Sprint session in Belgium in July, Verstappen said : "I think luckily it wasn't too bad, but honestly with these kind of Sprint formats, when you have an FP1 like that… But even when it's fully dry it's still a bit hit-and-miss.
"That always makes it very chaotic, that's why I never really enjoy these kind of weekends because you don't have the time and once you do a mistake you're stuck with it for the rest of the weekend and I don't think it should be like that.
"For sure, you can do better things with the format, but I guess they implemented that for this particular reason, that there is a bit more chaos and people not getting it right. But I don't think, with how advanced everything is in this sport, that it should be like that, that on a Friday if you arrive with the wrong set-up or you make the wrong call after FP1 then you're stuck with it for the rest of the weekend."
He had previously questioned the changes in April, hinting at an eventual exit from the sport despite his dominance. "If we keep expanding the calendar and the whole weekend is that long, at one point you question yourself 'is it worth it?'," he said.
"I do like racing, I do like winning. I know that of course the salary and everything, you have a good life, but is it actually a good life? I think sometimes you get to a point in your career where maybe you want to do other stuff.
Croft, however, had a ready-made solution to the prospect of teams being unhappy with the format. Within his hypothetical scenario, he suggested teams would have the option of handing the reins to reserve drivers or even sitting out the 'second' championship altogether.
"If the teams and all the drivers don't want to run in the Sprint world championships, fine, there's enough reserve drivers that do," he said. "Maybe that's a good way of getting the reserve drivers involved in that. So commercially, that's kind of what I'd look at."
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