First Love
Literally putting the "Formula" in Omakase Formula
Although purely coincidental, it is fitting that Omakase Formula’s first post revolved around the first half of the name while this second post will revolve around the second half of the name.
My love of cars has been around for so long I’m pretty sure it’s existed since before I learned how to talk. I remember my mom telling me (much to my horror) that the only way we could eat at a restaurant when I was a baby was if we got a table by the window so I could stare at the cars outside and not ruin everyone’s night with my crying. While the crying might’ve died down once I could talk, the ability to vocalize my thoughts only served to open up the floodgates in a whole new way.
My friend Carver (who I’ve known since preschool) vividly recalls how parents would come to me for advice if they were looking to buy a new car. While I do remember talking to plenty of parents back then about what car they should get, I sure hope his version of events is correct in that they explicitly sought me out first. I would be beyond embarrassed if it turns out the parents simply revealed they were getting a car in an attempt to make small talk with a kid, only to unwittingly find themselves being talked at for the next half hour about why they should ditch their idea of buying a Hyundai Santa Fe and go for a Toyota Highlander instead (a Honda Pilot would be acceptable too, but I was very satisfied with my experience as a Highlander customer). Thankfully, I don’t recall ever recommending the Pontiac Aztek. At least my very undeveloped 5 year old brain could still identify what an omnishambles that disaster was. Truly less of a car and more of a ca(r)tastrophe.
Given my love of cars, it was only natural that Formula One became the first sport I followed (I liked racetracks that included left and right turns). I’m sure by now you’re also not surprised that I knew I wanted to cover Formula One when I started Omakase Formula. I guess you never really forget your first love after all.
That being said, I wasn’t sure I wanted to start off Omakase Formula covering Formula One. The idea of starting midseason felt jarring. But tuning in to the sprint race at the Austrian Grand Prix last weekend changed my mind.
Every race in Formula One starts off with a formation lap that allows drivers to warm up their brakes and tires. At the end of the formation lap, everyone lines up on the starting grid. Once that’s done and the countdown reaches zero, the race begins. Except last Saturday the start got aborted. It turns out some photographers standing behind the barriers in Turn 1 were deemed a safety risk. The result? The drivers went around for a second formation lap while the photographers got moved back, and since Formula One cars are perfectly fueled to carry just enough petrol and no more, the 24 lap race became a 23 lap race.
If Formula One can shrug off a start that didn’t go according to plan, why couldn’t I?
What also ended up being purely coincidental was how this post arrived in its final form. The original plan was to write about this past weekend’s sprint race after it occurred on Saturday and Sunday’s full race on Sunday. But I ended up writing about both after the entire weekend was over. And all I can say is hindsight is indeed 20/20. Because any thoughts about the specific sprint race itself kept getting overshadowed by a nagging thought I’ve had about the sprint race formula ever since it was introduced in 2021:
What exactly is the point of a sprint race anyway?
The idea behind sprint races is simple enough. Instead of a normal race that’s at least 305 km (except Monaco—but that’s for another day) and would require at least one pit stop, you end up with a 100 km race that you can technically complete on one stint of tires. In short, it’s a race that attempts to focus on dynamism rather than strategy.
Except there are a few problems.
The first is that strategy is a part of what makes Formula One interesting. It’s a crucial reason why the best driver or the best car doesn’t always win. Decisions such as when to come into the pits, what tires to use or switch to, or how long a pit stop may take are strategic concerns, but their ability to impact a race adds dynamism. How can you promote more dynamic racing if you’re taking away things that contribute to that in the first place?
The second is that the constraints of the sprint format means it renders itself pointless via track selection. The time crunch of being a shorter ~30 minute race rather than a regular ~90 minute one means in order to fulfill the goal of offering “dynamic racing” they have to be on a track where overtakes are common. That makes logical sense. But if a track itself (such as Austria this past weekend) lends itself to frequent overtaking, what part about that wouldn’t apply in a full race?
Even if you look past both those points, the real nail in the coffin for the sprint format is at the end of the day there’s no incentive for anyone to take it seriously. You do get points for being in the top eight, so we’re not talking NBA in-season tournament levels of uselessness here. But you get as many points for finishing sixth in a full race (eight points) as you do for winning a sprint. Bluntly put, the meager points from a sprint don’t really matter in a championship. That’s obvious when a championship isn’t close. But no one will be pointing at a sprint race and arguing that’s where the season was won or lost even if a title race comes down to the wire. You could technically make an argument that even with less sprints and different rules a combination of Lewis Hamilton doing better in sprints and Max Verstappen doing worse would’ve flipped the championship result in 2021. But I won’t make that argument (and implore you not to do so either) because everyone knows that title was decided by Michael Masi completely botching the safety car procedure during the season finale in Abu Dhabi. Even if a future championship that comes down to the wire isn’t decided by a middle-aged man’s poor reading comprehension skills, I highly doubt drivers, teams, or fans would look back at a sprint race as the point where the championship was won or lost. Everyone knows the full races are what really matter. Why squabble over a two point gap between first and third in a sprint when the same gap in a normal race has a ten point difference?
Moving past the theory of it all and the results bear out: none of the sprints this season have outshone their full-length counterparts. The sprint this past weekend in Austria definitely came closest—the aborted start and early battle for the lead made most of Sunday’s normal race feel pedestrian. But you know what they say: it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. And my goodness, what a finish we had on Sunday…