F1 Sprint - What’s new for 2024?

F1 Sprint is back with a tweaked format for its fourth season in the sport.

The short-form race gives fans and drivers even more laps of wheel-to-wheel action and will feature across six grand prix weekends in 2024.

What's changed for this season? Read on for our guide to get you up to speed.

Every Sprint weekend sees F1 swapping FP2 and FP3 for two different sessions - F1 Sprint's race and F1 Sprint's qualifying.

Qualifying for the Sprint comes on a Friday after FP1, and the times set there will establish the starting grid for the Sprint race.

F1 Sprint itself will be the first session on a Saturday, and the drivers will race to the flag in a 100km dash to the line.

Grand Prix Qualifying now follows F1 Sprint later on Saturday, with the Grand Prix remaining the only on-track activity on Sunday.

Any F1 event is all about being the fastest car on track, but there are notable differences between Sprint's sessions and a regular race.

Rather than the standard 305km-length Grand Prix, F1 Sprint all comes down to 100km of frantic racing action.

Only the top-eight finishes score points, with 8pts for P1, 7pts for P2, and so on to P8, who will score 1pt.

There is no rule mandating the usage of two tyre compounds to force each driver into a pit stop during a dry race.

This single-tyre possibility makes Sprint all about being the fastest driver to the flag, where on-track overtakes are the only way to progress — although there's no rule preventing pit stops or tyre changes.

Qualifying for Sprint is faster-paced than its Grand Prix equivalent, with just 12 minutes to break out of SQ1, 10 minutes to get out of SQ3, and the final top-10 session being just eight minutes.

As with Grand Prix Qualifying, the bottom five drivers in the first two sessions get eliminated until only 10 names remain.

We will welcome Sprint at six rounds over the 2024 F1 season.

After its four-year absence, the Chinese GP also has the Shanghai International Circuit hosting its first Sprint weekend.

Florida will also see Sprint action for the first time since the Miami GP debuted in 2022, forming the only back-to-back Sprint rounds this year.

The Austrian GP is the sole European venue featuring Sprint in 2024, and the Red Bull Ring remains one of just two tracks that has had Sprint every season since the format's introduction.

A second American Sprint round comes at COTA for the United States GP in October after the Austin circuit's first taste in 2023.

Sprint is back in Brazil, too, for the São Paulo GP, which hosts Sprint for its fourth consecutive season.

The last Sprint of 2024 comes at the Qatar GP, one year from when Lusail's Sprint decided the 2023 World Drivers' Championship.

The two Sprint sessions are repositioned for the 2024 season, now coming on Friday and Saturday, rather than 2023's self-contained Saturday.

Where FP2 usually sits has Sprint's qualifying session, with F1 Sprint itself coming when FP3 would ordinarily appear.

Qualifying for Sprint is no longer called 'Sprint Shootout' as it was last year, and the title of Sprint qualifying returns.

Now that the two Sprint sessions don't break apart Grand Prix Qualifying and the Grand Prix, there are two parc fermé periods: between Sprint qualifying and Sprint, and between Qualifying and the Grand Prix.

That means any data our drivers and engineers find during the short-form race can impact setup changes ahead of Qualifying, giving us the best chance of a high starting position for Sunday's Grand Prix.