Hamilton critical of sprint format: 'We could have done three sessions'

Lewis Hamilton has voiced striking criticism of the new format for the sprint weekend. Speaking on the Saturday before the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Hamilton revealed that, in his opinion, there should be even more scheduling in the sprint weekend.

The F1 drivers are not yet fully convinced by the new sprint format. Fernando Alonso and George Russell had already indicated they were looking for some minor improvements to make the weekend run a little smoother. Hamilton also sees room for improvement, but in a very different way: according to the seven-time World Champion, not enough is happening at the weekend.

In the new format, Saturday is now entirely dedicated to the sprint race. In the morning is the shootout qualifying for the three-quarter-hour-long sprint, then in the afternoon is the actual sprint race itself which lasts half an hour. This makes the programme on Saturday shorter than in a 'normal' race weekend. In fact, FP3 and qualifying in a typical race weekend last an hour each.

"I think there’s a lot of time wasted on the weekends, so I think we could do it in a shorter amount of days," Hamilton said in Baku on Saturday to GPblog and others. "There’s four hours waiting between sessions today, today we could have done at least three sessions. We can do three sessions each day. There was so much time to use during this day. I don’t know if that’s possible with all the other formulas that are going on."