Toto Wolff says F1 needs to change to avoid boring races

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has become the latest high profile figure to question sprint races, calling the Azerbaijan Grand Prix 'boring.'

The weekend's race was the first with the new sprint platform for this season, with the sprint race not deciding the starting grid for Sunday's grand prix.

Instead there were two rounds of qualifying, Friday's to decide the grid on Sunday and one on Saturday morning to decide the grid for the sprint later that day.

It certainly isn't a format that world champion Max Verstappen is happy with, claiming an increase in the sprint weekends could lead to him leaving the sport.

Verstappen's opinion on the shorter format would not have improved on Saturday, when he got into an incident with George Russell, that left him down in third place.

The Dutchman was extremely angry at the British driver, although certainly not everyone saw it in the Red Bull star's favour, with Wolff amongst them.

The Mercedes boss felt that was the only exciting part of the weekend and questioned what needs to change to stop the sport being boring.

"Today wasn’t a thriller," the Austrian said after the race, "Just no overtaking, even with a big pace difference. It made it not great entertainment.

"We have to analyse the weekend with the sprint format, where there are positives that we can take out, but in the end it all comes down to racing.

"It needs the tough battles, and I think the highlight yesterday [in the sprint] was George [Russell] and Max [Verstappen] being able to battle it out. There was none of that today.

"Even if you are within 0.2 of a second, it is very difficult to overtake, nearly impossible to overtake, unless the other driver makes a mistake.

"We need to really look at it and how we can avoid a boring race."

Wolff wasn't having fun in Baku. Image: Alamy

There was some excitement at the start of the race, when Verstappen, and eventual race winner, Sergio Perez had to get past pole sitter Charles Leclerc.

From there, Perez was able to get into the lead thanks to a safety car just after his Red Bull teammate had pitted, something the world champion wasn't happy with.

Other than that, the most 'excitement' came from Esteban Ocon nearly being involved in a fatal incident, after media personnel got into the pit lane.