Risk vs reward: why it's worth bringing upgrades to Miami Sprint weekend

After a month-long break, the Formula 1 season continues this weekend with the Miami Grand Prix. Teams will face a challenging weekend, with just a single 90-minute practice session before the first competitive running. Next up on the calendar is Canada, which will also feature a Sprint weekend.

Nidd, Haas' Head of Car Engineering explained to a select group of media, including GPblog: "It's not much fun trying to introduce an update during a sprint event. We've all, I think most teams have been there at some point, but it puts a lot of pressure on it and it also introduces quite a lot of risk on two sides. So, first of all, there's when you introduce an update, the nature of it is you don't have a full set of all of the parts. Generally, you're carrying fewer spares.

He continued: "You may choose to do it after the sprint race on one car. Even that represents a risk in itself because effectively two races on the weekend is double your chance of damaging some parts. So yes, that's a big factor with the upcoming races, but you have to balance that against the fact that the upgrade packages at this point in the year tend to be larger gains than we're used to seeing. So the more you can front load it, then the more chance you have of realizing that gain, and it's critical, so you're just balancing the risk against taking that performance as soon as you can."

After the Sprints in Miami and Canada, another curveball awaits the teams: the Monaco Grand Prix. "Obviously for a race such as Monaco if you're introducing an upgrade package it tends to be a lesser effect because the aero effect is smaller and it's a tighter circuit. Monaco is all about just putting the car on track and run," Nidd concluded.