Verstappen: F1 Sprints take away the magic of a Grand Prix

Verstappen has never been a fan of the concept, claiming it dilutes the Grand Prix, an opinion the triple F1 World Champion still holds and verbalised during the post-Sprint Race press conference in Austin, after a comfortable win, the sixth since the format was introduced.

After an apparently effortless win, Verstappen said in the FIA-hosted top three press conference: "If you want my honest opinion about the sprint weekends, I don't really get excited by it.

"In qualifying, I just feel like once you complete qualifying, you're a bit lost. I feel like we only need one qualifying on the weekend where you really put everything on the line and it feels great. This morning as well, like you put it on P1 but I'm like it’s a Saturday, there’s not many points anyway for the race.

"And besides that, like now, we've done this race, everyone more or less knows what's going to happen between all the cars in terms of pace, so that takes a bit of the excitement away from it.

"If we hadn't done the Sprint and we only had that qualifying that we had [Friday] you don't really know what's going to happen before the race. So everyone is very excited, turning on the TV because you don't know and also we didn't know. Now we know, a little bit," added Verstappen.

At which point, sitting next to Verstappen in the press conference, Mercedes' seven-time F1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton quipped: "Sounds like you’re a bit bored..."

"I’m not bored but if I were a fan," Verstappen countered: "I would just be disappointed because then you more or less know about the picture. If nothing crazy happens, you know what's going to happen in the race.

"I find that a bit… it takes away that magic of waking up on a Sunday morning or whatever, Sunday afternoon, and you turn on the TV and you’ve had qualifying but you're not sure which car is going to be quickest in most of the years and yeah, it takes that magic away," ventured Verstappen.

Having dominated much like his rival does now, but these days delves within the chasing pack, Hamilton said of the Sprint format: "It’s a slightly different perspective when you're chasing so for us it's fun. For me, it's fun. I like having the extra opportunity to get out there and try to squeeze everything, every little bit and more out of the package that we have.

"Can it be better? I'm sure we can learn. I think it's been exciting for people so I personally quite like the sprint weekends, particularly a Friday I really like where you only have one practice session and then you’re straight into qualifying," explained Hamilton who finished second on Saturday, who has yet to win a Sprint Race.

Third-placed Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc shared his thoughts: "I think there are some things that are nice, others that are a bit less nice. What I enjoy is the Friday to only have one free practice and to go straight into qualifying. This is something that as a driver I like.

"FP1 then becomes a real session. Normally in a normal race weekend, FP1, FP2, FP3 it's really plenty of laps before you get to qualifying, which is maybe a bit too many. On these weekends I quite like it. But then there are maybe other things that we need to look into.

"I think in Qatar it was very exciting, the sprint race, because we had two compounds that were very different. So one that was extremely good in the first six, seven laps and then had a lot of degradation. And the other that was really good towards the end of the race.

"And that makes the sprint race really exciting. Otherwise, we've got races like today where everybody, apart from Carlos unfortunately, uses the Medium and then it's a bit of a shame," lamented Leclerc.

There have been 11 Sprint Race winners since the format was introduced last season, with Verstappen a six-time winner with his victory at COTA. Valtteri Bottas won two in his final season with Mercedes, while George Russell, Sergio Perez and Oscar Piastri have each won one.

The fourth and final Sprint Race weekend of the season takes place at Sao Paulo Grand Prix next month. Belgium, Qatar and now USA hosted the three so far this season.