Explained: The F1 sprint rule change made for Austrian GP 

F1’s experimental sprint weekend format is getting its second outing of the season at the Red Bull this weekend. 

A rule has been tweaked to prevent a repeat of the “unintended consequences” that happened in the new qualifying Shootout session during its debut run at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in April. 

The sprint weekend rules stated that drivers must use a new set of medium tyres in SQ1 and SQ2, and a new set of softs in SQ3. 

But a quirk in the rules left McLaren’s Lando Norris and AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda facing the prospect of not being able to take part in the final segment of sprint qualifying. 

Ultimately, only Norris progressed to SQ3. Due to not having an unused set of soft tyres available, the 23-year-old Briton did not participate in the top-10 shootout. 

Had he opted to leave the garage, Norris would have only been allowed to fit intermediate tyres on his car - despite track conditions being dry. 

Ahead of the second sprint event of the 2023 season, the FIA, F1 and nine of the 10 teams agreed to a rule change to fix the problem. 

In his pre-event notes, F1 race director Niels Wittich wrote:“In order to avoid the acknowledged unintended consequence whereby in certain situations at sprint events it becomes attractive to run intermediate tyres on a dry track, the following amendment to Article 30.5.h of the Formula 1 sporting regulations is made.

“Consultation has occurred with the commercial rights holder, stewards and teams. The agreement of the FIA, the commercial rights holder and nine competitors has been obtained in accordance with Article 1.4.

“Accordingly, my decision is that Article 30.5 h) iv) be modified to read as follows - Article 30.5h iv revised wording:

“In the period SQ3 of the sprint shootout, up to one set of dry-weather tyres may be used, and this must only be a set of the soft specification.”