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Laurence Edmondson, F1 Editor
Max Verstappen has no issue celebrating his third Formula One title midway through the Qatar Grand Prix weekend if he ends up winning it in Saturday’s sprint race.
As long as Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez doesn’t outscore him by more than five points in the 28-lap race, Verstappen will be crowned champion before the full-length 57-lap Qatar Grand Prix on Sunday.
Put another way, Verstappen can guarantee the title by finishing sixth or above on Saturday, regardless of where Perez finishes.
Asked if he would be annoyed at winning the title the day before a grand prix, thereby limiting his opportunity to celebrate the same evening, Verstappen said: “Not for me. I mean, we can celebrate throughout the weekend. So it’s OK.”
The sprint format was introduced in 2021 to liven up race weekends and its rules have been tweaked each year to reach its current stand-alone format.
Since 2022, point scoring was extending from the top three finishers down to eighth place, increasing the chances of a championship being decided on a Saturday of a race weekend.
But given that Verstappen has been on course to win this year’s title for several months, he said the prospect of becoming the first F1 champion to be crowned by the result of a sprint race had barely registered.
“Well, it’s not like it came out of the blue that I was going to win the championship here or next week,” he added. “I don’t think it really changes a lot.”
Asked if he had any celebrations planned for Saturday night, Verstappen added: “Well Saturday night, it’s hard, but… we’ll find a way!
“And then we’ll see what happens on Sunday.”
However, Verstappen remains critical of the idea of sprint races in general, preferring the format of F1’s conventional race weekend with three practice sessions, qualifying on Saturday and a grand prix.
“I prefer just the normal racing format — I think it’s just a bit more exciting,” he said. “Especially in qualifying, you can go a bit more to the limit because you know what you have done in practice. Like for example in Suzuka, if you do just one practice session there and go straight into qualifying, you risk also to have bigger shunts.
“It’s not as fulfilling. And I always keep saying, once we do a sprint race, you will get the big picture anyway for the main race so you know more or less already, ‘Ah, this car is going to be really good in the race, this one is going to drop back’.
“So it takes away a little bit of the excitement away. I remember from when I was a fan, just the outside of the F1 world, you don’t know which car is particularly amazing in the long run, or have they nailed the race setup? You watch qualifying and go, ‘Oh wow, OK’.
“It might be that one car is in front and they drop back in the race. It’s all unclear. Then you wake up for the Sunday race, and you all see it unfold.
“But because of the sprint race, it takes that already a bit away. You’re like, if nothing happens and he doesn’t crash, they’re going to win the race.”