SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Williams team principal James Vowles said Formula One should consider shaving a day off the current three-day Grand Prix weekend to free up the calendar for more races.
The standard Grand Prix race weekend has two practice sessions on Friday and another on Saturday before qualifying ahead of the race on Sunday.
"I'm more someone that would like to debate whether we go to two-day weekends - Saturday, Sunday, same thing, but I'd just reduce the amount of free practice, frankly," Vowles told a press conference at the Singapore Grand Prix on Friday.
"By doing that and giving back 24 days to the teams, actually, you could do a few more race weekends if you wanted to as well."
The current race calendar features a record 24 races, a big jump from the early 2000s where seasons typically ranged from 16 to 18 races.
F1 experimented with a two-day race weekend at Imola in 2020 as a result of the scheduling chaos caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The idea did not gain traction largely because of the loss of revenue for the promoters.
"It has to have working hand-in-hand with the promoters, and that might be a different fee structure," Vowles conceded.
"But if you have two more grands prix, I think that will significantly outweigh the impact of a Friday missing, just on the economics of it."
Vowles said he had already spoken to Formula One chief Stefano Domenicali about the idea.
"The F1 commission is ... often difficult to have a structured conversation like this ... I don't mind if we move there or not, but we should contemplate it," he said.
Vowles suggested that having the current three free practice sessions was a bit excessive, a view shared by Alpine's Managing Director Steve Nielsen.
"When we do races now where we have three free practice sessions, it seems very long," he said.
"Nice for the guys in the grandstands - guys and girls, rather, to have more stuff to look at. So I would be an advocate of having more sprint races."
Their comments came in response to a question about Singapore for the first time next season joining the circuits that will host a sprint race.
Nielsen did not put a figure on the number of sprint races he would like to see, but said jokingly "greater than six, less than 24".
(Reporting by Rae Wee, editing by Ken Ferris)
