Verstappen feels sprint ‘takes magic away’ from Sunday but Hamilton disagrees

The Red Bull driver, who has stated his dislike of the sprint weekend format on several occasions, cruised to an easy victory ahead of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes in a uneventful race at the United States Grand Prix on Saturday. 

Other than having to robustly defend the lead from Charles Leclerc’s fast-starting Ferrari on the run to Turn 1, Verstappen was unchallenged as he built up a comfortable 9.4-second lead over Hamilton in 19 laps. 

Asked if he has found any enjoyment from the sprint races this year, Verstappen sarcastically replied: “Love it. It’s fantastic.

“If you want my honest opinion about the sprint weekends, I don't really get excited by it. 

“I just feel like once you complete qualifying, you're a bit lost. I feel like we only need one qualifying in the weekend where you really put everything on the line and it feels great. 

“This morning as well, like you put it on P1, but I'm like… sighs… It’s a Saturday and there’s not many points anyway for the race.

“And besides that, like now we've done this race everyone more or less knows what's going to happen tomorrow between all the cars in terms of pace.

“So takes a little bit the excitement away from it. If we wouldn't have done today, and we only had that qualifying yesterday, you don't really know what's going to happen before the race. 

“So everyone gets very excited, turning on the TV, because you don't know. And also we didn't know. Now we know, a little bit.”

Hamilton jokingly interjected: “It sounds like you are a bit bored.”

To which, Verstappen responded: “I’m not bored but if I would be a fan I would just be disappointed because then you know you're more or less know the picture and nothing crazy happens. You know what's going to happen tomorrow. 

“So I find that takes away that magic of waking up on the Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon and you turn on the TV, and you had qualifying, but you're not sure which car is going to be quickest, in most of the years, and it takes that magic away I find.” 

Hamilton, who finished nearly nine seconds clear of Leclerc in a distant second, offered a different perspective to Verstappen.

“For us, it's fun. For me, it's fun,” he said. "I like having the extra opportunity to get out there and try to squeeze every little bit and more out of the package that we have. Can it be better? Sure.

“I think it’s been exciting for people so I personally quite like the sprint weekends. Particularly the Friday I really like, where you only have one practice session and then you are straight into quali.” 

Leclerc echoed Hamilton’s view but feels there is room for improvement. 

“I think there are some things that are nice, others that are a bit less nice,” he explained. 

“What I enjoy are the Fridays with one free practice and then you go straight into qualifying, this is something that as a driver I like, because FP1 then becomes a real session. 

“In a normal weekend FP1, FP2, FP3, it’s really plenty of laps before you get to qualifying, which is maybe a bit too many. But then there are maybe other things that we need to look into. 

"I think in Qatar it was very exciting because we had two compounds that were very different. One that was very good in the first six or seven laps and then had a lot of degradation, and the other that was really good towards the end of the race. That makes the sprint race really exciting. 

“Otherwise we’ve got races like today where everybody, apart from Carlos unfortunately, uses the medium and then it is a bit of a drain.”