F1: Verstappen says Hamilton disqualification due to Sprint Races

–by Mark Cipolloni–

Max Verstappen has blamed the Sprint Race format for Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc’s disqualifications after their cars failed post-race inspection in Austin.

Their teams missed the ride height issue because after FP1 the cars go into Parc fermé lockdown on Sprint Race weekends. Hence there is no way of fixing a mistake you find unless you do it and then start from Pit Lane.

Starting from pit lane means your chances of winning go to zero.

Verstappen believes this is yet another reason to “get rid” of Sprint weekends.

“Of course, I don’t think anyone does that on purpose, but it’s just even more because of this Sprint format where you only have one practice session where you try to nail everything,” Verstappen told the media in Mexico City.

“Once you are in the wrong, there’s nothing you can do. The only thing you can do is bump up the tire pressures, but then you’re driving around on balloon tires.

“Of course, it’s not what we want to see. We know that dropping the car gives you performance.

“But it’s just because of this whole Sprint Race format that you put yourself in this position because I don’t think anyone over a normal weekend would run like that.

“So I think we should just get rid of the Sprint Race weekends and then everyone can just set up their cars normally. It wouldn’t have happened if we’d had a normal race weekend.

“These things only happen when you have a Sprint weekend where everything is so rushed in between FP1 and qualifying, and you think ‘We might be okay’ (in terms of set-up).

“From our side, I think we went a bit too conservative, but, of course, that’s still better than the other way.”