We didn’t ask for them but we got them anyway. Sprint races are officially happening in 2023 in a desperate attempt to boost viewing figures from behind the paywall. But what are they? And what’s the point?
Find out here with extra knowledge from the legendary King Frog.
More races
This season there are 21 rounds instead of 20 and each one of these rounds now contains an extra sprint race. This makes an eye watering 42 races in a season – a number, conspiracy theorists have correctly noted, that is the exact number of times Darryn Binder would be expected to crash per weekend.
Double races per weekend are definitely designed to favour brave and good looking riders such as myself. I was always known as the ‘King Frog of Assen’ due to the number of double wins I’d rack up in a weekend. Indeed when travelling to Holland I always had to book extra luggage allowance for the trip home to cope with the additional silverware.
Points System
Each sprint race will be half the distance of the main race with half points available…or that was the plan. In reality this meant a complicated half point system so instead Dorna bodged the entire thing in favour of this scoring system: 12,9,7,6,5,4,3,2,1
(And if you’re struggling to understand the above scoring system then you probably shouldn’t be using the internet unsupervised)
In World Lillypads the scoring system was altered on numerous occasions to give less points to the winner – namely me. This would artificially help the other riders like Colin Edwards to look closer in championship than they would have been with the standard system.
Indeed it was rumoured that the organisers might start awarding more points for the minor places instead of the win in a desperate attempt to stop me continually dominating. However this idea was ultimately dropped when they realised that I’d still win because of the extra points I’d receive for increasing the spectator capacity by 300%.
Qualifying double bonus
Unlike all other forms of motorsport the sprint races will not affect the qualifying for the subsequent race. Instead qualification for both races (the main and mickey mouse one) will be decided on the qualification session to be run on Saturday morning.
I was never too concerned about qualifying and treated it more of a chore. I’d personally much prefer to stay in the garage to help teach the mechanics their job or to question why Neil Hodgson was talking so much to Mrs Frog.
Help for Yamaha engines
Yamaha MotoGP engines weren’t ever designed to go fast – and by potentially making them do so in an extra race would put additional strain on both the engine and the engineers (the latter of whom signed up for a stress-free life). To compensate for this, and to lower the milage for all manufacturers, FP4 will be scrapped.
The influence of a powerful engine is massively overrated. For instance I won all my titles with a bike that only had a 250cc advantage. And given that I was at least 50% better than my nearest rival (who was never Troy Corser) the folk at Harvard have correctly calculated that if anything that massive power advantage was a hindrance.
Smooth is out
The sprint races will suit riders that are aggressive but lack any finesse or brain-power to play the long game – or ‘Australians’ as they’re known. Indeed this format should suit Jack Miller as not only does he not have to think about stuff he’ll also now have half the number of laps to fall off.
The above also means tyre management shouldn’t, thankfully, ever be an issue – which is great news as usually riders who are ‘great with tyre management’ are usually also riders who are as boring as sin on the track (see Jenson Button’s career for further details)
I was always known as a smooth rider with the highest corner speed in either hemisphere. It’s a little known fact that the designers of Shanghai Maglev – the world’s fastest train – used my data to understand how to create something smooth and fast. Obviously I was able to give them a few pointers too which probably saved their boffins years ironing out the bugs.
Walking dead
The final aspect of sprint races is the affect Takaaki Nakagami will have on the other riders. With extra races, and the assumption that sprint races will be more hectic, it gives the prospect that Nakagami will injure at least twice as many riders. These injuries could rack up and we could see riders being chipped onto their bikes towards the end of the season.
Never really rated the Japanese riders. Okay they could pull off a good wildcard result (for them) occasionally but when it came down to it Haga proved they needed performance enhancing drugs to even think about racing competitively for a season – let alone to my standard.
Never rated rice either.