Following from the real life Formula 1 season, the official seasons you run through on the F1 24 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 24 game calendar (from a full 24 race season):

• China
• Miami
• Austria
• USA
• Brazil
• Qatar

Therefore, on the F1 24 calendar, most of the sprint races are actually towards either end of the season, with 5 of the 6 sprint weekends either near the start or end of the season, with only Austria somewhere in the middle.

How Does A Sprint Race Weekend Work?

It’s also important to note that a Sprint race weekend has been changed yet again for 2024 in real life as F1 keeps experimenting with the format. And this changed has been matched in the game as well.

On the F1 24 game, Sprint weekends are not structured as follows:

• Practice 1
• Sprint Qualifying (determines grid for sprint race)
• Sprint Race (one third of main race distance)
• Main Qualifying (determines grid for main race).
• Main Race

Therefore the format of the previous few years – where the grid for the main race was determined by the results of the shorter sprint race – has been canned, and the there are separate qualifying sessions for both races to keep everything separate.

What If You Get Rid Of A Sprint Race On Your Calendar? (Custom Season)

It is possible to chop and change your seasons on 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 24 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 Miami race (like I might 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 all soft tyres to test qualifying pace right away for the practice 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. The Medium allocation might be a good compromise, as it usually leaves you with one set of softs and one set of hards for the sole practice session. If you’re doing full length format race weekends, here are your allocations:

Sprint Qualifying – Is a slightly shorter session that the main Qualifying session (for example, if you set your Main Quali to be “Short” or 18 minutes, the Sprint Quali is 12 minutes). However, depending on the tyre allocation you choose, you my only have one set of softs for this short Quali session. If so, be sure to only go out for your flying lap in the last 5 minutes of the session, when the track is fully “rubbered in” and at it’s fastest. If you go out right away, you’re costing yourself a couple of tenths in lap time as the track is not at it’s fastest until the last few minutes of the session (track evolution is real and has been well simulated on the last few games).

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 Sprint 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.

Edit – On F1 24, your setup is again briefly unlocked just before you drive out for the Main Qualifying session, so you can make changes again if you didn’t like the setup you used for the Sprint sessions (eg. you can lower the wing levels if you were getting blasted past too easily on the straights). But as soon as you drive out again in this session, the setup is locked again for the rest of the weekend and can’t be altered.

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.