05/09/2025
NEWS STORY
Two-time world champion Fernando Alonso believes that Stefano Domenicali's plan to build F1 around its new demographic is wrong.
Along with increasing the number of Sprints, Domenicali envisages shorter grands prix, the scrapping of practice sessions and reverse grids, all with the intention of maintaining the (short) attention span of new, younger fans and winning over more.
In short, the Italian is looking to repackage the sport, making full use of its most exciting elements - qualifying and the starts - and condensing races into 'bite size' chunks similar to the highlights shows that are currently provided.
Ignoring everything else that long-term fans might feel, his philosophy is that of someone who looks at a 0-0 score line in football (soccer !!!) and assumes that nothing happened, whereas it was one of the most tactical matches ever witnessed.
Asked his thoughts, Alonso, the most experienced driver in the history of the sport, laughed...
"I will be in front of the TV when that happens, so, I don't know," he said. "I don't think it's a problem with the sport, so probably it's not needed to change.
"But Stefano knows better than anyone, so if he thinks that if it's needed, we are in good hands in this kind of decisions with him," he added.
"Football matches are a little bit long," he continued, "when I sit in front of the TV, I'm not watching the 90 minutes concentrated. I go to the kitchen, go back, I mean there is always some moments of distraction.
"But no one is talking about having 60 minutes football matches or something like that. It's a problem of the society and the kids, but not the sport, so probably it's not needed to change."
Fact is, by admitting that the new demographic wants lots of action but doesn't essentially have the time to wait around for it, he is painting a picture of an audience that cannot be counted on in the long term, he is looking at 'fans' who will either 'grow out of it' or move on to the next 'thing'.
"It's a tough one," said Kimi Antonelli, "I think personally sprint weekends are fun because they have a lot of activity. You have to be on point straight away because you have one practice, then qualifying and then you go into a sprint race.
"But shorter races... I don't think it would really work," he continued. "Already now with long races we do one-stop strategies with the tyres we have, and you know they would have to implement so many more rules for a shorter race in terms of pitstop. I think also with the longer race, probably you have also more time to build your race. But sprint weekends are fun, so that wouldn't be bad having more of them."
"My opinion is that there's no need to make a big change about what we have," said Esteban Ocon. "I think going to a MotoGP stage would be a bit extreme for sure, to have a sprint weekend at every race. And I don't think necessarily the show will be much better for sure.
"As a fan, what you want to see is more racing," he continued. "We live in such a consumer world now that we want to see more spectacle, more show, and more frequently. When we are on Netflix and you know we see a series we are like 'it's too long to wait for season two'. That's basically how the world is now.
"But it's also nice to wait patiently and expect the race. A grand prix is a big thing and I'm a bit more into that, I really like to wait a good amount of time to be excited again.
"I would agree that maybe some of the races are a bit long, let's say the ones that are, you know, more than two hours or like Singapore or stuff like that. Maybe shortening a little bit, it would not make any difference to the spectacle of the show, but that's how it's been historically for so long. But a race like Monza or a race like Spa, that would be too short."