Perez: “Very boring” F1 sprint races don’t add anything

The Red Bull driver was one of the few drivers to pull off an overtake as he passed Lance Stroll on Lap 10 of the 18-lap race on his way to finishing ninth in F1’s second-ever running of the experimental shake-up to the weekend format.

But after trialing the format at both Silverstone and Monza, Perez had nothing positive to say about sprint qualifying in its current guise.

“Just very boring, very boring,” said Perez when asked for his view on Saturday’s 100km race that determined the grid for the Italian Grand Prix.

“There’s nothing happening in it and I don’t see the benefit of having the sprint race.

“I can imagine it’s also boring for fans as its boring for drivers. It doesn’t bring anything to be honest.”

Many drivers had feared Monza would not provide much entertainment in the sprint and would ultimately result in the field running in a DRS train after things had settled down following the opening lap.

And Perez feels the lack of action can be put down to the difficulties of overtaking in the current generation of F1 cars without a big lap time delta.

“The problem that we have is that with the current Formula 1 cars, to actually overtake you need a very big delta. And to achieve that you have to have some kind of degradation,” Perez explained.

“I think they are picking the wrong tracks as well, but I don’t know where it can be a good place to try.

“The problem is it’s too short and you don’t feel any degradation. I don’t know [how to improve it], maybe with the DRS [use rules] or something like that. That would be good.”

However, F1 managing director Ross Brawn defended Saturday’s sprint, saying there was “plenty of action” throughout.

“The whole weekend evolving,” said Brawn. “We’ve got a three-stage weekend. We’ve got quite a different complexion on the race tomorrow than what we thought we had after qualifying on Friday. I think it’s great in that respect.

“A little bit quiet at the front of the grid, but then you get that in races anyway. Plenty of action in the middle, and plenty of action at the start. So I think it’s added to the whole weekend.”