Former F1 World Champion Mocks Sprint Format With Le Mans Video Feat. Stirling Moss

Formula One, in recent years, has turned into one of the most complicated motorsport series of all time, thanks to the race weekend procedure changes. The F1 drivers would have to challenge for pole position through a 60-minute session called qualifying followed by a short-burst sprint race before heading for the main race event on Sunday.

A tad confusing, isn’t it? Well, this certainly wasn’t the case back when the drivers were still sporting goggles and half-face helmets instead of crash helmets. Here’s an interesting video that proves the same.

A video clip of the 1952 24 Hours of Le Mans emerged on social media featuring racing legend Sir Stirling Moss. The British world champion can be seen standing yards away from his car #17 desperately waiting for the men standing on the start-finish line to commence the race.

And as one of them waves the flag in hand and the other waves an arm at the drivers, Moss sprints to his car and gets going with the race. Quite amusingly, it almost looked like the simpler version of the current generation’s race weekend procedure.

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Damon Hill acknowledges F1 sprint race joke on Twitter

Former F1 world champion, Damon Hill, replied to the video by hilariously questioning whether it was a sprint or a race. “Is that the sprint, or the race?” he wrote. Well, Hill has a point there, as rather than racing for 30 minutes to decide who takes the front seat at the main race start, all the drivers had to do was sprint a few yards to their car.

And the fastest driver on foot gets to take the race lead. Of course, pretty much nobody would agree upon using this in F1 especially in the active generation, but imagine Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen running each other out to claim P1 in the race. Maybe an elbow or shove at each other giving us a flavor of football.

Hence, although impractical, this procedure could well put a smile on the faces of many F1 fans.

Overall, let’s hear it from you – Do you think this type of race start will work in F1? Would you rather have this than qualifying and sprint?

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