Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN heads into the British Grand Prix weekend with a sense of expectation, as Formula One undertakes the first ever sprint race weekend in its more than seven decades of history. With a new format come new opportunities, and the team hope to make the most of them to return to points-scoring ways in Silverstone.
The weekend is turned upside down with every day of on-track action now having a key highlight moment to capture the fans’ attention: Friday will feature a practice session, followed by qualifying, which will set the grid for the Sprint race. A second practice session, held on Saturday morning, will be followed by the new Saturday Sprint, a 100km dash to the flag whose final order will set the grid for Sunday’s showdown. The main offering of the weekend will proceed in its usual fashion.
The new format will create opportunities as teams balance risks and benefit of an aggressive Saturday, potentially shuffling the order around. It’s an interesting format, as yet untested, that shows Formula One’s push towards offering new, entertaining ideas for the sport’s fans.
With this new race weekend making its debut, we’re looking forward to hitting the track even more than usual…
Frédéric Vasseur, Team Principal
“Formula One has taken a bold step by introducing this new format, something that shows their attention to delivering new, exciting offerings to the growing fanbase of the sport. A race weekend like this is something we have never done before, so I expect everyone to be curious about how it will go: most importantly, we know Formula One will review how the format works and will learn important lessons to keep our sport relevant and exciting for competitors and viewers alike. Whatever the weekend holds in store, we know that new scenarios bring new opportunities and we need to be sharp to make the most of them. Anything can happen and we have to make sure we’re in the right position to extract the best possible result from the new format.”
Kimi Räikkönen
“The new format will be interesting: I don’t feel we are in a position to judge it yet, let’s see what this weekend brings and then we can make our mind up about it with more knowledge. Most importantly, no matter how the weekend looks like, we need to make sure we’re competitive from the beginning: things start to matter on Friday and we need to be right in the battle for the top ten from the start if we want to be there at the end of the day on Sunday.”
Antonio Giovinazzi
“I am excited to get back to racing, especially with the enthusiasm from the celebrations of Italy’s European Championship victory still fresh in my mind. I hope some of this shine can rub on me this weekend and we can deliver a more successful weekend than the last two races, when we were effectively out of contention on the first lap without fault. We know we can be competitive and fight against any of our direct rivals when things don’t go against us, so let’s make sure this weekend is when we get it right.”