The six venues where F1 is planning sprint races in 2022

During the regular meeting between team bosses and F1 bosses on Saturday in the Jeddah paddock, it turned out that a first proposal for the 2022 sprint events had been made.

While the ideas of Formula 1 are still in a very formative phase and no vote has been taken on whether or not the concept should definitely be continued for the next year, some important details have been outlined.

In particular, multiple team sources have confirmed that F1 has revealed its preference for the six Grand Prix that it plans to host the sprints.

The suggested locations are:

Bahrain Grand Prix – Sakhir

Grand Prix of Emilia Romagna – Imola

Canadian Grand Prix – Montreal

Austrian Grand Prix – Red Bull Ring

Dutch Grand Prix – Zandvoort

Brazilian Grand Prix – Interlagos

Financial discussions

While it is believed that teams are generally happy with the Sprint racing format that will continue through 2022, the key factor now is getting teams and F1 to agree on future finances.

This year, the teams received additional income as a crash lump sum in the event that they suffered expensive damage in an accident in the Saturday sprint.

Sources suggest that F1 prefers to replace the crash allowance with a fixed fee for the next year. However, there is some disagreement between the outfits on how this should fit in with the cost cap.

Those outfits that exceed the cost cap would prefer that the extra finances be added to what they are allowed to spend for the season, while other teams would prefer to keep the cost cap and all teams simply get the extra money instead.

The initial proposal is an amount of around US $ 500,000 per sprint race up to a maximum of five events, with an additional payment for subsequent events.

The question of money is viewed by a number of teams as absolutely critical to the upcoming Sprint format, which is why an agreement on this front is required before F1 intervenes in talks about other changes.

A team source said, “We can’t accept losing money to compete in sprint races.”

Change of pole and point

While discussions will now focus on the money aspect, the teams have been told that there are other tweaks that F1 would like to make to the Sprint format should the issue be resolved.

Mention was made, among other things, of awarding points for the top ten in the sprint and not just for the top three, as has been the case so far this season.

In addition, F1 is keen to get the FIA ​​to change the regulations so that on sprint weekends, the official pole position goes to the driver who is fastest in qualifying on Friday, not the sprint -Winner.

F1 also wants further discussions with the teams about whether or not the sprint events should be made standalone so that they don’t affect the starting grid for Sunday’s race.