Liberty Media is reportedly considering the idea of a weekend format shake-up which would include a sprint race on Saturday in order to attract a younger audience to Formula 1.
F1 owner Liberty is looking for ways to boost the sport's popularity following a decline in numbers in recent years and believes attracting a younger audience is key to reversing that trend.
With reports suggesting 'teens' attention spans have dramatically reduced with the advent of social media, the idea of two shorter races on Sunday was suggested but the proposal was met with a mainly negative response.
A new idea Liberty has reportedly run by the teams is to reduce Friday's running to two one hour sessions, instead of the current 90-minute sessions and open the pitlane for fans to get a closer look at the cars, boosting engagement.
Auto Motor und Sport also reports the proposal includes a Saturday sprint race which would decide the grid for Sunday's 'main' race. This wouldn't do away with the current qualifying format however, which would be run earlier in the day and would ultimately decide the grid for the sprint race.
This would increase the amount of activity on Saturday, though final practice could be scrapped to make room.
The sprint race would be an "all-out" race with no need to stop for new tyres as it would be limited to 100km, or roughly 30 minutes depending on the circuit. It would throw an extra element of uncertainty into Sunday's race as an incident-strewn sprint race would create a mixed-up grid.
Although the idea is by no means set in stone, it could be presented to the teams in Bahrain this weekend to garner further feedback as part of wider plans to shake-up the sport post-2020, which is set to include a radically different car design to aid overtaking.
Discussion about this post