Vettel: "It's wrong to award pole position to sprint race winner"

This weekend Formula 1 experiments for the first time with a new format with qualifying on Friday, a sprint race on Saturday and the regular race on Sunday. Another new feature is that pole position is officially awarded to the winner of the sprint race and not to the fastest driver in qualifying.

All confusing

Sebastian Vettel in particular disagrees with the latter. "I think that's wrong," the Aston Martin driver let Motorsportweek.com among others know. "Pole position should go to the guy who is fastest in one lap, so it all gets a bit confusing this way."

For Vettel, it becomes a particular problem if this format is introduced more often. "If this is a one-off, it can't hurt, but if we are going to have ten sprint races next year or in the future, I think it's a bit weird." According to Vettel, the sprint race is a very different discipline. "Fifty years ago they didn't have them and now they do. So you add a new column to the statistics."

More action on the track

Other than that, Vettel is in favour of the new race weekend. "There is less hanging around in the garage and more action on the track, which we prefer. Now there's one hour of practice and then straight on to qualifying. We have to be on top of it right from the start. It's something new and that's always exciting. We'll see how it works out."