diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 6db0e3b084..3dabef5ab2 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
  * Deadlock updating sstable metadata if disk boundaries need reloading (CASSANDRA-18443)
  * Fix nested selection of reversed collections (CASSANDRA-17913)
 Merged from 3.11:
+ * Remove unnecessary String.format invocation in QueryProcessor when getting a prepared statement from cache (CASSANDRA-17202)
  * Fix the capital P usage in the CQL parser (CASSANDRA-17919)
 Merged from 3.0:
  * Validate the existence of a datacenter in nodetool rebuild (CASSANDRA-14319)
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/cql3/QueryProcessor.java b/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/cql3/QueryProcessor.java
index b23f9c3b6d..66ce2ef5a6 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/cql3/QueryProcessor.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/cassandra/cql3/QueryProcessor.java
@@ -653,7 +653,8 @@ public class QueryProcessor implements QueryHandler
             return null;
 
         checkTrue(queryString.equals(existing.rawCQLStatement),
-                String.format("MD5 hash collision: query with the same MD5 hash was already prepared. \n Existing: '%s'", existing.rawCQLStatement));
+                  "MD5 hash collision: query with the same MD5 hash was already prepared. \n Existing: '%s'",
+                  existing.rawCQLStatement);
 
         return createResultMessage(statementId, existing);
     }