NOS Sport•
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Louis covers
Reporter Formula 1
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Louis covers
Reporter Formula 1
Even more sprint traces, shorter Grands Prix and a reverse starting setup. All that is not necessary from Max verstappen.
Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali recently launched a series of test balloons to attract young fans, but reigning world champion Verstappen doesn’t like it. “I am a fairly conventional boy in that regard,” he says in Monza, where the Grand Prix of Italy is being held this weekend.
Verstappen is known as a driver who loves the old schedule: training on Friday, determining the starting setup on Saturday and on Sunday the race. He also doesn’t like a so -called ‘Reversed Grid’. “I often talk about sprint traces and things like this. You know my story.”
Bored
Domenicali claims that the support for interventions is great, because television viewers are getting bored faster and faster.The Italian formula 1 boss wants to offer visitors more entertainment and has various meetings to force changes during the Italian racing weekend. The Fridays in particular have to suffer. The free training sessions are not popular. logical: there is nothing at stake that day in a sporting point of view.
verstappen has no message. “Leave it as much as possible with the old,” he says. “Make sure the teams are close together, you will automatically get nice races.” And referring to McLaren’s stifling dominance, which won thirteen of the fifteen races: “If you think away that team, there would be no bad year at all this season.”
If it is indeed always exciting, it will also be boring. It is indeed much more vital that unexpected things happen.
“Of course it is not that exciting for fans if we only ride training rounds, but those sessions are very important to us,” adds Verstappen. “It has been going so since the 1950s.Of course you have to go with your time, but let’s not go through. those six sprint traces a year are crazy enough for me.”
Verstappen has an eye for the business picture. He understands why the F1 leadership wants to tinker with the ‘weekend format’ of the racing weekends. The 27-year-old illustrates his argument grinning with the well-known hand gesture. Thumb and forefinger: it’s all about money. “They want to make a more attractive product from those days. Because that produces more.”
riot
Verstappen is and remains against and then protrudes a smoothly running argument from the wrist. “The length of the races? Nothing wrong with it. Sometimes it’s an hour and a half. sometimes you have almost two hours. You have exciting and sleep -inducing competitions. that is sport. That’s how it effectively works.”
And then with a logic that the late Johan Cruijff would be proud of: “If it is indeed always exciting, it will also be boring at some point. That will also be boring. It is much more important that unexpected things happen. Sometimes a race is surprisingly exciting and sometimes surprisingly boring.”
