Will new F1 rule be seen during Chinese GP?

It is the Chinese Grand Prix weekend, and for the second successive season, it plays host to the first sprint race of the year.

Further sprints follow in Miami, Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Singapore, when the weekend format takes on a very different look.

For a start, there is only a single, hour-long practice session, and given the new era of F1, with the engines powered by a 50-50 split between combustion and electrical energy, that affords the teams and drivers precious little time to adapt to the handling of the cars around the Shanghai International Circuit.

Qualifying for the sprint follows on Friday afternoon, followed by the one-third distance race on Saturday, qualifying for the grand prix later that day, and the grand prix itself on Sunday.

Before the start of this season, however, a change was made to the sprint weekend, in particular, relating to the single free practice session.

Ordinarily, whenever there has been a red flag during practice, the clock continues to count down until the hour has elapsed.

The FIA has decided that, for this year, should there be a stoppage during the only practice session on a sprint weekend, race control will make a call on whether to extend the session to give the teams and drivers more time on track.

The only proviso is that a decision must be made before 45 minutes of the session have elapsed, after which the session will continue until the hour of practice time is up.

Whether the new rule will be put to the test in China remains to be seen. That session runs in the early hours of Friday UK time, from 03:30-04:30 am [11.30-00.30 pm EDT; 14.30-15.50 pm AEDT].