Despite his success in sprints in recent seasons, Verstappen has made it clear that he is not a fan of having an extra shorter event tacked on to the weekend.

This year's timetable has been changed, with the shootout on Friday followed by the sprint and main qualifying on Saturday.

The key change is that while previously teams were locked into an unchanged car specification from FP1 onwards, there are two parc now ferme periods, with a window between the sprint and qualifying during which they can make adjustments.

However, Verstappen suggests that the change won't improve the actual racing.

"I mean, it's a better format, I would say, in terms of how you approach the weekend," he said. "But I don't get more excited about the race itself.

"But at least I think it's better that you're still able to change the car for the weekend. And a bit more of a logic to it in terms of how you have the sessions now in the race weekends."

Ferrari's Carlos Sainz agrees that the flexibility that the revised parc ferme regulations have brought in is a positive, although he would have liked to have seen more changes. 

"Regarding parc ferme rules, I'm a big fan of this change," said the Spaniard. "I suffered last year in Baku and in a couple of races a tough sprint weekend where the car went into parc ferme straight away after FP1, and I couldn't change something in the car.