As if the climax of a tense battle for the 2025 Formula 1 title wasn’t enough, three Sprint weekends across the final six rounds of the season are about to add more drama into the mix.

Lando Norris has reduced his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri’s championship lead to 22 points, while Red Bull’s Max Verstappen continues to lurk 63 points back from the Australian.

While there’s no doubt that Piastri has the upper hand, the 24 extra points available across 100km Saturday races in Austin, Sao Paulo and Qatar will undoubtedly heighten Norris’ hopes of pulling off a comeback.

A quirk of this year’s schedule means that for the first time since the Belgian Grand Prix in July, the Sprint format returns this weekend at the United States Grand Prix in Texas and then alternates in and out for the remaining rounds of the season.

Drivers get just one practice session before Sprint Qualifying takes place on a Friday afternoon, with the shortened race following first thing on Saturday before full-length Grand Prix Qualifying and the race follow in their usual slots.

Before the action gets under way at the Circuit of The Americas, Sky Sports F1 analyses how the Sprints could decide whose hands the title ends up in.

Who can nail their Sprint setup?

Perhaps the biggest challenge of the Sprint format for drivers and teams is homing in on a strong setup with just an hour, rather than the usual three hours, of practice.

This generally only impacts the Sprint events, because the Sprint race itself usually gives teams enough data to adjust their setups for the remainder of the weekend accordingly.

It will be interesting to see how McLaren approach the situation, with teams sometimes using the sole practice session on a Sprint weekend to run quite different setups on their cars.

Some have speculated that the fact they have already won the Constructors’ Championship could result in a more individual approach over the remainder of the season, where the drivers have more freedom to go in different directions with strategy and setup than they did previously.

While Verstappen remains in vague contention, McLaren might insist that they use the advantage of having two strong drivers to work out the best setup, in order to snuff out the Dutchman’s hopes of a fifth successive title.

Verstappen can take encouragement that Red Bull seem to have been starting weekends in better shape recently, with some crediting Laurent Mekies and his engineering background for inspiring the improvement since he replaced Christian Horner as team principal in July.

Time to take risks?

Past Sprints have sometimes lacked wheel-to-wheel action given drivers are wary of getting into race-ending collisions with a relatively small number of points available.

For example, if the McLarens were battling for the lead, a switch in positions would only equate to a two-point swing in the standings.

Earlier in the season, that would not have seemed worth risking a collision for, but Norris might feel differently at this point as he desperately attempts to chase down Piastri.

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the rest of the field – and even Verstappen, who has little to lose – might be looking to take advantage of the caution the McLaren drivers, particularly Piastri, might feel they need to take in wheel-to-wheel combat.

Despite not having won any of the three Sprints earlier in the season, Piastri is comfortably the highest Sprint scorer so far this season having finished in second on each occasion – the usually level-headed Australian will surely focus on maintaining a consistent approach.

More racing, more intensity!

Norris and Piastri have kept their title battle extremely cordial for most of the season, but there have been signs in recent weeks that the intensity is finally ramping up.

Piastri has expressed his dissatisfaction with the team’s decisions over the radio in Italy and Singapore, while he crashed in both qualifying and the race in Azerbaijan.

F1 president Stefano Domenicali’s support for the Sprint format is based on the simple principle that a competitive session will always be more exciting than practice, and that should pay off more than even over the next few weeks.

Any incident or perceived injustice involving Piastri and Norris during the Sprint sessions at this stage of the season is bound to be treated with the same intensity as it would in a full race.

With an extra qualifying session and (shortened) race on each Sprint weekend, there is basically double the chance of seeing title race drama.

It also helps that COTA and Interlagos are two of the most thrilling tracks on the calendar, with plenty of overtaking opportunities.

Get ready for high stakes Sprints!

This is the first time since 2021, the year that the Sprint format was introduced with just three events, that Formula 1 has had the possibility of an extremely close title race going into the final races.

Lewis Hamilton’s charge through the field in 2021 provided phenomenal drama in his battle that year with Verstappen, while Norris’ win in Brazil last year momentarily threatened to give him a chance to chase down Verstappen before his challenge faded in the Sunday rain.

Due largely to Verstappen’s dominance over the last few years, F1 hasn’t seen many Sprints where the stakes have felt extremely high.

We should be about to finally get a couple of them, so it’s time to sit back and enjoy the show on Sky Sports F1!

Sky Sports F1’s United States GP schedule

Thursday October 16
8pm: Drivers’ Press Conference
11pm: Paddock Uncut

Friday October 17
6pm: United States GP Practice One (practice starts at 6.30pm)*
8.30pm: Team Principals’ Press Conference
10pm: United States GP Sprint Qualifying (qualifying starts at 10.30pm*)

Saturday October 18
5pm: United States GP Sprint build-up
6pm: UNITED STATES GP SPRINT
7pm: Ted’s Sprint Notebook
9pm: United States GP Qualifying build-up*
10pm: UNITED STATES GP QUALIFYING*
12am (Sunday morning): Ted’s Qualifying Notebook*

Sunday October 19
6.30pm: Grand Prix Sunday: United States GP build-up*
8pm: THE UNITED STATES GRAND PRIX*
10pm: Chequered Flag: United States GP reaction
11pm: Ted’s Notebook

*also live on Sky Sports Main Event

F1’s title race now heads back to North America, with the United States Grand Prix in Austin up first as the Sprint format returns from this Friday, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime