Stefano Domenicali is fed up with the pilots. The Italian, who became the head of the Formula 1 world championship in 2017, has carried out a profound change in the regulations with the aim of making the championship more attractive to fans.
Among the most relevant modifications that the new CEO has carried out are the application of the budget ceiling, the technical regulation that was released in 2022 and the increase in the presence of the championship in USA.
These changes have made the audience and income of Formula 1 skyrocket. However, they have not been without controversy. Domenicali assures that in many cases, it has been the pilots themselves who have been reluctant to these modifications, having a behavior that he classifies as “selfish”.
“I don’t want a society where people can’t say what they want. But drivers sometimes need to remember that they are part of a bigger picture. We don’t need to be selfish”, explained Stefano Domenicali in statements collected by ‘CarAndDriver’.
One of the most criticized aspects has been the new sprint race format. The Italian leader asks the pilots to be open-minded before judging this type of grand prix.
“Sometimes being out of our comfort zone is not easy.but we cannot become lazy or complacent: we can review some of the details of the sprint weekend format at the end of the seasononce we have tested it on the six scheduled occasions”, declared Domenicali.
In fact, Dominicali assures that sprint races are beneficial both economically and for the show: “We won’t have sprints every weekend either. But we have a new audience and we need to deliver value for money in every session, and not let everyone drive in circles for the exclusive benefit of the engineers and drivers.”
One of the pilots who has criticized these changes the most is max verstappen. The current world champion has threatened on several occasions to leave the sport if the essence of the competition is not respected. The Italian has revealed that he has discussed this aspect with the Dutch pilot.
“I discussed the issues with Max before the Miami Grand Prix. She said that he loved the sport and what he was doing. He is the World Champion and is fighting for a third title. He was born in a car and I would say that he is likely to stay in F1 longer than me. It is not a problem”, revealed Stefano Domenicali.
