Lando Norris Warns Monaco’s First Ever Sprint Weekend Will Push F1 Drivers to the Limit

• Formula 1’s 2027 calendar, revealed this week, will see Monaco host a Sprint race for the first time, one of 10 Sprint weekends across a 24-round season
• Lando Norris says the change means drivers get only one practice session before a competitive session on the Friday, calling it something that has “probably never happened before in Monaco”
• The reigning world champion, who won the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix from pole, said the new format will push drivers to “risk a little bit more earlier” than usual around the unforgiving street circuit

A Street Circuit That Punishes Mistakes Gets Even Less Room to Prepare

Lando Norris believes Formula 1 drivers are about to face a version of the Monaco Grand Prix weekend unlike any that has come before, after the 2027 calendar confirmed the Principality will stage a Sprint for the first time.

The 24-round calendar for 2027, published on Wednesday, includes 10 Sprint weekends, four more than the six that have featured in each of the last four seasons. Monaco’s narrow streets, long considered the sport’s toughest qualifying test, are among the new additions to that list.

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The Calendar Change That Caught Everyone’s Attention

The Sprint format, introduced in 2021, adds a second qualifying session to set the grid for a short-form 100km race, run alongside the usual Grand Prix. Formula 1 says the format has driven global television audiences 12 per cent higher than on standard weekends with three practice sessions.

The 10 venues confirmed for 2027 are split evenly between tracks that have hosted Sprints before, Montreal, Silverstone, Monza, Interlagos and Qatar’s Lusail circuit, and five newcomers to the format: Sakhir, Albert Park, Suzuka, Monaco and Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit. Of all the additions, it is Monaco that has generated the most conversation, given the street circuit has never run a Sprint and is not built for the kind of overtaking the format has traditionally rewarded.

Sky Sports’ Craig Slater summed up the thinking behind the decision. “Traditionally Sprints have been held at tracks where it is easy to overtake. Clearly that’s not the case at Monaco,” he said. “But the big bonus here we’ll have two red-hot qualifying sessions. That’s what that track is all about and the drivers will have the ultimate test on two occasions that weekend.”

Norris’s First Reaction

Norris was one of the first drivers to respond to the news, speaking with Sky Sports F1’s Natalie Pinkham alongside golfer Justin Rose at the BMW PGA Championship Pro-Am at Wentworth on Wednesday.

“Interesting” Norris said. “I guess the main thing is that means you’ve got FP1, [Sprint] qualifying on Friday, which is the challenge. Obviously not a lot happens in a race on Sunday or in the Sprint, but the challenge is just one practice session straight in, which has probably never happened before in Monaco.”

Under the current format, drivers get three one-hour practice sessions across a Monaco weekend to build up rhythm and confidence around a track lined with barriers, where errors are usually punished heavily and often expensively. Under the Sprint format, that preparation time collapses to a single 60-minute session.

Why Less Practice Changes Everything at Monaco

Asked about the specific challenge the new schedule presents, Norris pointed to how much drivers will now have to lean on information gathered outside of the session itself. “That’s more [about] relying on data from this year,” he said.

He went on to explain how the compressed schedule is likely to affect the way drivers approach the track. “Obviously tougher for us as drivers,” Norris said. “You don’t have as much time to build up to things so you’re probably going to have to try and risk a little bit more earlier, which is normally when you can see a bit more of a difference between people who can get comfy, try things and be at 99 per cent and not go to 103 and 104 [per cent], because in Monaco when you go to that limit, game over.”

Norris added that the format, whatever the extra risk it brings for drivers, should make for better viewing. “It’s more exciting for the fans and the people watching,” he said.

Norris speaks with some authority on what it takes to get Monaco right. He won the 2025 Monaco Grand Prix from pole position, in the season in which he went on to win his first world title, a result built on exactly the kind of clean, low-error weekend that a single truncated practice session could make far harder to produce.

A Calendar Built Around Sprints From Start to Finish

Monaco is not the only unusual placement on the 2027 schedule. For the first time, the season will both open and close with a Sprint weekend, Bahrain hosting the format on March 12-14 and Abu Dhabi closing out the year on December 10-12.

That season-opening Sprint presents its own version of the challenge Norris described, with teams and drivers getting only one practice session before Sprint Qualifying on the Friday evening of round one, though an extended four-day pre-season test at the same Sakhir circuit in February should soften the impact.

The calendar’s back-to-back Sprint finale in Qatar and Abu Dhabi also raises the possibility of a world title being settled in a Saturday race, should the fight go all the way to the final rounds. There is already precedent for that scenario: Max Verstappen clinched his third world championship in a Sprint at Qatar in 2023.

Portugal and Turkey Return as the Calendar Stays at 24 Races

Beyond the Sprint news, the 2027 calendar holds at a record-equalling 24 rounds, matching the number first reached in 2024. There are no completely new venues, but Portugal’s Portimao circuit and Turkey’s Istanbul Park both return for the first time after they were called up to fill gaps in the Covid-affected 2020 and 2021 seasons.

Portimao takes over the June slot vacated by the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, which enters a rotation with the Belgian Grand Prix and is next scheduled to return in 2028, while Istanbul Park replaces the Dutch Grand Prix, whose contract with the sport has ended. The season is now scheduled to finish on December 12, a week later than this year, the latest finish the calendar has had in seven years.

All four of the sport’s usual Middle Eastern rounds remain on the 2027 calendar, bookending the season much as they do this year. That comes as Formula 1 continues to monitor the situation around its final two scheduled races of the current season in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, after conflict in the region already forced the cancellation of this year’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and the relocation of the Bahrain Grand Prix to Malaysia on October 4. Italy’s Imola circuit is understood to remain the contingency to close out 2026 in December should the Middle Eastern rounds not be able to go ahead as planned.

For now, though, it is Monaco’s first Sprint weekend that has dominated the conversation among drivers, and Norris’s reaction suggests the sport’s most demanding qualifying test is about to get even less forgiving. Teams have more than a year to prepare simulator work and setup plans around the shorter track time, but as Norris made clear, no amount of data can fully replace laps on a circuit where the smallest misjudgement ends a session against the barriers.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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