As Stefano Domenicali urges "don't panic", Haas boss, Ayao Komatsu is concerned that the second race of the season is a Sprint.

Just a couple of days ago, amidst growing concern that Melbourne might prove to be a fiasco, we pointed out that it appeared to have slipped under the radar that just seven days after the season opener the second race of the year is in China, and it's a Sprint week-end, which means just one practice session.

Haas is among the first to have realised.

"That's going to be a huge challenge, man," said Ayao Komatsu. "Yeah, Shanghai, I'm not looking forward to that, I can't say I'm looking forward to that.

"One hour practice, get ready for sprint qualifying, that's going to be a huge challenge," he added.

"It's the same for everyone," he admitted, "but it's step by step. I think we've had decent preparation, learning things, then now we've got to compress everything, refine the procedures, accuracy of everything, to get prepared for the normal race weekend. We do one normal race weekend in Melbourne, hopefully it's dry, then going to Shanghai, it's Sprint weekend, so it's a steep learning curve, but same for everyone."

"That's everyone's fear, I think, heading into the start of the year," said Oliver Bearman. "I think a Sprint weekend in round two of such a massive regulation overhaul is a bit optimistic," he admitted, "but we'll see what we come up with.

"Even more important is to make sure that we're on the ball already from Australia at the beginning, and so that we can put those learnings into practice, and certainly the simulator will be critical to make sure that we're on it from the get-go in China, otherwise the gaps are going to be huge in sprint qualifying."

Other than insisting that people don't panic, even whilst admitting that changes may need to be made to the regulations before Melbourne, Domenicali, in incessantly promoting the Sprint format, has always claimed that the practice sessions are a waste of time and not needed.

Wonder if there's a Starmer-style U-turn in the pipeline.