Formula 1 will run more Sprint races in 2027. Stefano Domenicali said so on Liberty Media's half-year earnings call on Thursday, and he was not hedging about whether it happens - only about how many.
"Our Sprint format continues to drive higher Friday attendances and stronger daily attendances to our race weekend," the F1 CEO told the call, in comments reported by PlanetF1. "The success of the Sprint format continues to drive interest from promoters in hosting a Sprint race, and we expect to expand the number of Sprints for next year and to provide further details soon."
There are six Sprints in 2026, with two left - Zandvoort later this month and Singapore in October. An F1 Commission discussion back in February floated doubling that to 12. Domenicali would not put a number on it, and the reason he gave was commercial rather than sporting.
"We want to do it in the right way because, of course, this will allow us also to make sure that the scarcity is a value," he said. "So, if commercially we would go everywhere, of course, that's not anymore a value that we can really produce from the commercial point of view, but definitely we're going to move further up in terms of the what the number [is] in the future. That's 1,000 per cent what will happen already next year."
One paddock figure would happily throw scarcity out entirely. Speaking to The Race days earlier, Alpine executive advisor Flavio Briatore argued for a Sprint at every round, on the basis that Friday currently gives paying spectators nothing.
"I believe we need to do the sprint races. If it was me, every race, because we need to give something more to the spectator," Briatore said. "We do nothing for the spectator, because Friday morning is only technical. You got two laps, you come back, and people are not here."
His argument is that a Sprint gives the driver something to race for rather than a data-gathering exercise: "With the sprint race, at least you have two races, two starters, and the driver is driving for something. He's not driving only for the engineering. For me, 24 races, 24 sprint races."
"Most of these unnecessary appearances on Saturday were also rather boring," Verstappen said. "But even worse, they disrupt the normal schedule for our real race on Sunday. And most fans forget something: this constant activity is especially stressful for the mechanics. Most teams are already working in two shifts."
Carlos Sainz is not opposed in principle, but told Crash.net at the Bahrain test that the format has a design flaw that more races would only multiply. "I think the sprint format still needs to be fine-tuned and improved, given the fact that I think sometimes the sprint reveals too much of what's going to happen on Sunday," he said. "If we can improve that and make the sprint a bit different to what we see on Sunday, I would be open to having more sprint races."
Sainz's other objection was workload - not the driving, but everything around it. He noted that a busier Friday and Saturday stacks on top of media and sponsor commitments that have already grown steeply, and that F1 would need to adapt the weekend away from the track before adding sessions to it.
Charles Leclerc, sitting alongside him, backed Sainz and then drew a firmer line. "I actually really like the sprint weekends, but I still believe that it should be a minority of races and having it as a standardised weekend in the future, if that's the plan at any time, I don't think is the right thing," the Ferrari driver said. "At least I wouldn't like it that way, but I'll drive anyway and adapt to it. But I think six is probably the sweet spot."
So the split is clean. Domenicali and Briatore are looking at Friday grandstands - F1 has reported 3.3 million trackside fans and ten sellouts to the Belgian Grand Prix, including a record 564,000 across the British Grand Prix weekend. Verstappen, Sainz and Leclerc are looking at a calendar that already asks a lot. Leclerc's last line is the one that matters commercially: he will drive it either way.
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*Originally published on [NewsFormula One](https://newsformula.one/article/f1-confirms-more-sprints-for-2027-the-drivers-are-not-sold). Visit for full coverage.*