Under the bright, sunny Towcester sky, seven-times Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton drove his heart out at the British Grand Prix qualifying on Friday to outbid Max Verstappen and more importantly, take the top spot on the grid for the sport’s first-ever sprint race.

But his incredible 1 minute 6.134 seconds lap will not be recorded as a pole position in the history books, and worse, it wouldn’t even hand him the first position in the starting grid come Sunday’s main race.

The honour will be claimed by the winner of the sprint race on Saturday.

This is what the new format brings to the table. While it’s exciting for the fans who can see more of that high-adrenaline racing, it has made the records posted in the history books a bit irrelevant. The new format, trialled for the first time at Silverstone this weekend, sees a qualifying session on Friday for the 100km sprint event on Saturday that will decide the grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix.

Not everyone has accepted these changes with open arms, former Formula One champions Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel have criticised the decision to award pole position to the winner of the sprint race.

Until now, pole position had been secured by the driver who posts the fastest time in the final qualifying but in this case, Formula One and the governing FIA are reducing the focus on a single lap and effectively rewarding a race winner instead.

The argument also revolves around the fact that the changes could seemingly devalue the past pole statistics.

“Pole is the fastest lap time achieved, or the fastest lap time in qualifying,” Vettel, the four-time world champion who has a keen interest in the sport’s history, told reporters ahead of the qualifying, according to ESPN.

“If this is a one-off then it doesn’t do much harm. But if we end up having 10 sprint races next year or in the future, then I think it’s just a bit weird.

“It’s a new discipline, so they didn’t have it 50 years ago and now we have it. So then we just add a new column to the statistics,” added the Aston Martin driver.

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According to Vettel, who has 57 poles to his name, having a qualifying session on Friday just after one hour of free practice albeit brings more action on track but also takes away from the time that the drivers have to get used to the nuances of these circuits.

Meanwhile, now-retired Rosberg, who achieved 30 poles and outbid fellow Mercedes driver Hamilton to become world champion in 2016, agreed with his fellow German’s stance in a post on Twitter.

“This is not the right decision. Pole 100% has to go to the fastest guy in qualifying. The sprint race winner should not be awarded pole position. That will totally cannibalise the historic F1 statistics,” he opined.