Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel have criticised plans to make the Monaco race weekend a three-day affair from next season.

Decades of tradition will come to an end next year when Monaco falls in line with every other event on the schedule by becoming a three-day event.

Traditionally, the F1 action gets underway on Thursday, before giving the teams a 'day off' on Friday - albeit usually used for highly profitable promotional purposes - before the action resumes on Saturday.

From next year the Monaco weekend will feature the standard, Friday, Saturday, Sunday format.

Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel, who have both won the Monaco event twice, are not in favour of the move.

Ever the purist, Vettel believes that F1 is steadily removing the fun aspects from the sport, certainly as far as the drivers are concerned.

"By the end it probably doesn't make a big difference," said the German, "but it used to be fun to have a day off... not to go partying but, you know, to have a bit more time to prepare. It was sort of a Monaco thing.

"Anyways, things that are fun are dying," he added. "Probably that's the reason why could shrink to three days; it used to be fun, so let's not do it anymore."

When asked to explain what he meant, he replied: "It was more of a joke.

"But I don't know why you would change that," he added. "In Monaco, I think it worked. I mean, it was a Monaco one-off, surely you don't want it everywhere.

"Whatever it is, we're going to adapt, and I don't think we'll notice a difference," he concluded.

"We all love Monaco," added Alonso, "so to be one day less, that I don't think it's good.

"I mean, every team has a different programme or a different marketing schedule, and this is a weekend that is used also for the sponsors and things like that.

"Obviously this year with the COVID we didn't have that much marketing activities but hopefully next year is a little bit more normal.

"It was a day for the sponsors as well, so we will have I guess on Thursday, more activities, and then from Friday, full focus on track."