So Silverstone is the first sprint race.
Practice 1 and sprint quali on the Friday.
Practice 2 and 100km sprint race on the Saturday.
With teams whining about the cost of accidents two races in, I can't imagine there will be much risk taking going on to make this the spectacle they hope it will be. If they're are still having a formal qualifying for it, it nulls the issues of the big teams running away at the front. They'll just do it over less laps then rinse & repeat for Sunday.
I guess they are using this season to try stuff out.
Given how this season is poised, I’m not sure this is the one to meddle with.
Anything that upsets the order, rewards race craft, and opens up the possibility of cars being "out of position" will make the racing on Sunday more exciting too.
I'm expecting it to do the opposite. Usually time racing normalises the order compared to qualifying. Faster drivers/cars recover from bad luck in quali, slower drivers/cars that did badly in quali fall back. The sprint race is likely in end in a more "sorted" order than the qualifying session and result in a duller race.
But we shall see, I'm willing to give it a chance.
I think it opens up the options on setup for the midfield teams to be a nuisance for the leading cars in the sprint race, they can set up aggressively, look to 1 stop in the sprint race with the softest available tyres, and cause a problem for the teams who will have to be more conservative and focus on the Sunday race, which may cause all kinds of interesting scenarios in the Sunday grid/race. The free tyre choice for the start will also be interesting to see what teams do.
I like it when F1 actually tries something different, we will never know unless we try it!