Following from the real life Formula 1 season, the official seasons you run through on the F1 23 videogame also feature a certain number of Sprint races, which does change the weekend format.
Therefore it’s important to know which races you do on your career/custom GP season mode are the Sprint ones, since the sessions do run differently and it does affect your tyre selection and other strategy choices.
Here are the Sprint race weekends on the official F1 23 game calendar (from a full 23 race season):
- Azerbaijan
- Austria
- Belgium
- Qatar
- USA
- Brazil
Therefore, on the F1 23 calendar, most of the sprint races are actually towards the second half of the season, with 3 sprint weekends out of 4 from Qatar to Brazil.
How Does A Sprint Race Weekend Work?
It’s also important to note that a Sprint race weekend does follow a different format on the F1 23 game, but not the same format as in the real life Formula 1 2023 season, which experimented with a new Sprint Format, which hasn’t proven to be massively popular.
On the F1 23 game, it follows the same format as in 2022, as follows:
- Practice 1
- Sprint Qualifying (determines grid for sprint race)
- Practice 2
- Sprint Race (one-third of full race distance – determines starting place for main race)
- Full race (grid determined by results of Sprint race).
Therefore it’s a slight mix up from the normal weekend format, whereby the qualifying actually determines the grid for the sprint, and then the sprint results determine the grid for the main race on Sunday. Also, there’s only two practice sessions, not three, and setups are locked after the first one, so you’ve not much time to prepare for Qualifying.
The Sprint race is just an all out, short blast, where tyre wear not really of any concern. It’s just flat out racing, and if you can make up a few positions in it, it’ll put you in a better grid spot for the main race on Sunday.
What If You Get Rid Of A Sprint Race On Your Calendar? (Custom Season)
It is possible to chop and change your seasons on F1 23 both in career mode and GP mode, whereby you cut out some races and replace them with others, or just race shorter seasons instead of the full 23 races. What happens in these cases?
If you delete or swap out a sprint race weekend, it it not replaced by another track. You just race the season with one less sprint race and any replacement tracks use the standard race weekend format.
For example, if you delete the Baku race (like I often do, I really don’t like it) and put the Portugal track in your season instead, this doesn’t become a sprint race. The allocated sprint races are locked to the 6 circuits listed above during a career mode season and can’t be changed.
Strategic Considerations For Sprint Race Weekends
These sprint race weekends can catch career mode players out quite a lot, because it isn’t always clear when you enter the weekend from the menu, that it’s a sprint weekend. And there’s some important strategic tweaks that it can be useful to make for this altered format.
Here are some settings to bear in mind for Sprint race weekends:
Tyre Allocation – It is often a good idea to choose a different tyre allocation before you enter a Sprint race weekend as opposed to a normal weekend. Consider picking the Harder allocation, which frees up soft tyres to test qualifying pace right away for the second session. The Softer allocation does not provide any soft tyres for Practice 1, which is exactly when you need them with the Sprint weekend format if you want to test Qualifying pace.
Qualifying Tyres – Following on from the last point, if you do choose the Harder tyre allocation, be aware that you DON’T get an extra set of soft tyres reserved for the race as you do with the Balanced/Softer allocations. The soft sets that are available to you in sprint Qualifying are all the sets available for the remaining weekend. Therefore, if you want to save a fresh set of soft tyres for the main race, it’s advised to keep a set of softs spare and not use them in qualifying.
Parc Ferme – This is a huge one to watch out for that catches out career mode players. The so called “Parc Ferme” restrictions – whereby car setups are locked and can’t be changed – come into play as soon as you drive out in the qualifying session, which is the second session of the weekend. Therefore you’ve only got one practice session to dial in your car setup for qualifying and the race, not the usual 3 practice sessions. Therefore, focus on qualifying setups for this practice session, since your setup is locked once you start qualifying.
Engine Parts – Another thing that can catch career mode players out if they forget it’s a sprint weekend and therefore car setups (and therefore engine parts) are locked as soon as you start the second session. Be sure to change engine parts to fresh ones if needed right away after Practice 1. You won’t be able to put fresh engine parts in later on without taking a grid penalty in the race, so remember to change them early on Sprint weekends.
