© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
With the addition of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the 2021 season will feature 23 races, the most ever. This will put a lot of strain on F1 teams.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff is not opposed to a stacked calendar.
“I think you need to trust FOM to take the right decisions,” said the Austrian.
“Clearly, Formula 1 has always been a big business in the same way it has been great entertainment and trying to find the right balance between oversaturation and exclusivity is the key question they need to ask themselves. We need to rely on their expertise.
“Obviously on the income side, we all share the income side, the teams even to a larger degree. The teams also share have the burden of all the logistical costs and the travelling to those various places, and that is substantial.”
If you like SilverArrows.Net, consider supporting us by buying us a coffee!
However, the biggest burden is on the team members who have to travel to all the races.
“The toll on all the humans that are part of this travelling circus is getting heavier and heavier every single year with the amount of races that we add.
“We started with double-headers, and that was not great fun, having people away from their families and then we’ve come to triple-headers and next year we’re having two triple-headers and a bunch of double-headers. So there is no easy solution to that.
“I believe that we the teams have to adapt to the situation in a way that we can’t possibly have all the same people travelling to 23 grands prix.
“There will be a core team that unfortunately needs to do it, but we have to reorganise ourselves back at base in terms of regeneration time for these people in terms of the framework and set-up we can provide to these people to make it in some way cope-able.
“Because I think that that could be quite difficult physically and mentally,” concluded Wolff.
