REMINDER: How do F1 sprint rules work?

Although the F1 field completed only a single race weekend, drivers already face the first sprint format in 2025, with the Chinese Grand Prix featuring the condensed and action-packed schedule this weekend.

While the standard weekend format features two hour-long free practice sessions on Friday and a further hour on Saturday followed by qualifying, the current Sprint format features just one free practice session to start the track action on Friday, followed by a qualifying session later that day. This decides the grid for a 100 kilometre race, approximately one third distance of the normal race, held on Saturday morning, which is followed by qualifying for Sunday’s actual Grand Prix.

Qualifying for the Sprint is split into three segments that are shorter than those for the Grand Prix 12 minutes for SQ1, ten for SQ2 and eight for SQ3. The number of drivers eliminated at the end of each section is the same as in normal qualifying, five at the end of each of the first two sessions. For the first two parts, all drivers must use only the Medium compound, before switching to the Soft for the final session. As for the short race itself, tyre choice is free and there is no need to make a pit stop.

There is also a different slick tyre allocation per driver compared to a standard weekend: they each still have two sets of Hard, but now they get an extra set of Medium, going from three to four and two fewer sets of Soft, from eight to six, for a total of 12 instead of the usual 13.

The sprint format was introduced at Silverstone in 2021, and there have been 18 Sprint races to date and Max Verstappen has been the master of this discipline with 11 wins so far.

This weekend will be the second year running that Shanghai has hosted an event run to this format and just for a change, the aforementioned Verstappen was the winner. As for the tyres in 2024, 19 runners used a set of Mediums with only Russell gambling on the Soft, which paid off as he made up three places from eleventh on the grid to eighth at the flag.