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Discussions over increasing the number of sprint events to six will be revived at a meeting of the Formula 1 Commission on Tuesday.
F1’s new format, which switches qualifying to Friday and adds a Saturday sprint race, made its debut last year with three events at Silverstone, Monza and Interlagos.
It had a mixed response from fans but the championship intended to double the number of events for 2022 with six initially planned.
This had to be abandoned as some teams blocked it because they were demanding a greater budget cap allowance to account for the extra races.
Eventually a compromise was reached to keep it at three sprints this season but F1 was always likely to try again for 2023, and it will be discussed at the latest F1 Commission meeting in London on Tuesday.
The first sprint of the 2022 season was held last weekend at Imola, where Max Verstappen overtook Charles Leclerc with the first pass-to-win in the sprint’s short history.
Afterwards, F1 managing director of motorsport Ross Brawn said: “We’d like to have six races next year.
“I think they [the teams] can see the success, and I think we didn’t know quite where we were last year with the old cars, but I think they can see the way this is feeding into the new cars and the philosophy of the new cars.
“I’m optimistic that they will see the value in it, what we’re giving the fans.
“The thing you should always remember about the sprint is it gives you a great Friday as well.
“We have qualifying on a Friday, we have three days of action for the fans, and we can’t ignore that.”
Brawn said the normal allowance teams have in the budget cap would be applied, indicating there is no plan to offer the greater insurance that some teams were demanding a few months ago.
F1’s governance system could have a big impact on whether the increase to six sprints is successful this time.
At the time this was being discussed officially last year, F1 required a ‘super majority’ to get approval – this meant 28 out of 30 votes in favour, with representatives from F1 and the FIA getting 10 votes apiece and the teams one vote each.
But now this is happening early enough for the ‘simple majority’ of 25 votes to be sufficient, if the matter is tabled before May 31.
Any further changes to the sprint, such as tweaking the number of points awarded or other elements of the format, would probably be discussed later and require a super majority again.
“What I would like to do is at least get six races settled,” said Brawn.
“And then after these three races, we can see if there’s some format developments we want to do.
“But I’d like just to move on to six races, get that bedded in or settled and then if there is any format changes that we feel are worthwhile, then we can consider those.
“The six races needs to pass on the simple majority, any format changes in the future would have to pass on a super majority, so eight teams would have to agree.
“I think the important thing is to get the simple thing done first and then there may be scope in the future for evolving it even further.”
