Start, Paul Ricard, 2018

Todt not against F1 calendar growing to 23 races

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: FIA president Jean Todt says he would be happy to see the Formula 1 calendar increase beyond its current record length of 21 races.

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What they say

The 2019 F1 calendar will feature 21 races which is the third time the championship has featured this many grands prix. In an interview last week Jean Todt told media including RaceFans the length of the calendar is up to the commercial rights holder (Liberty Media) and the FIA doesn’t object to it being extended.

At the moment 21 I think is good. Whether 22, 23, 20, I would not have any problem with that.

I think the commercial rights holder is doing an excellent job, they are really trying to do the best as I said earlier to bring Formula 1 to modern times. They do very well and we are very supportive of what we do. It’s a very strong partnership.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

@Dusty suggests an alternative to Toto Wolff’s suggestion of extra cars for junior drivers:

Let them run the Friday free practice sessions with the other cars, set their grid based on these sessions. Then let them race a 40% race distance between FP3 and Qualifying, or at the time it works best without disturbing the current schedule with the other series sharing the weekend with F1.

More content for the fans live at the circuit and on the Internet, teams get reduced exposure but valuable data, not extra wingmen affecting the race on Sunday.
@Dusty

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Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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48 comments on “Todt not against F1 calendar growing to 23 races”

  1. There’s a simple budget cap solution from 1976. 12 team members, including drivers, maximum at the track. No one on the pit wall. Probably less at mission control. ;-)

    1. SimpleButEffective
      7th September 2018, 4:23

      Thats a good idea! They may even be able to reintroduce unlimited testing too with 12 member teams. Then Honda and Renault can catch up.

      And after that the likes of Porsche, BMW, Toyota will be lining up to join. All whilst retaining the same engine regulations.

    2. @jimmi-cynic, it was a fairly bad life for the mechanics of that era though, as the small crew sizes meant that they were pretty heavily overworked. John Miles mentioned in his autobiography how he turned up at Monza once and found that the mechanics in his team hadn’t slept for two days because they’d had to work flat out to prepare the cars that Chapman had brought – not exactly a great situation for all concerned.

  2. Re. the Unibet article that says:

    Ferrari cannot afford to have:
    – further battles between their drivers – if Kimi is being replaced (as rumours allude), then why should he take team orders, let him race for a win if required
    – mistakes by Sebastian – ah, Singapore!
    – or errors in race strategy – Ferrari haven’t really shown themselves to be the sharpest knife here

    1. @phylyp If Kimi is being replaced then all the more reason to be sacrificed. WDC is all that Ferrari care about and drivers come and go… In Kimi’s case he has come twice and gone once already!

      1. @tonyyeb – oh, I think you mean Ferrari sacrificing Kimi’s races (which would probably happen), however I meant Kimi needn’t toe the #2 line and always listen to what the pitwall advise him to do. So if Kimi puts his car on pole, then he should definitely drive to win, pitwall shenanigans be damned.

        1. @phylyp Yeah that’s what I meant :) I agree, what Ferrari want him to do and what he does are two different things. I’d like to to see Kimi get one more race win and then retire. I think the 2018 WDC will be decided by which team has the best strategy and number two driver. At the moment Kimi is outperforming Bottas.

    2. @phylyp I’m almost 100% sure Arrivabene wakes up every night dreaming of red cars crashing in Singapore. His poor little heart.

      I hope he has water by is bedside, he must be sweating profusely

  3. If Todt (the little toad) wants more races, let Jean Toad pay the expenses.
    20 is plenty. Let him pay for the extra logistics, per team, from his salary ….
    The attitude may change

    1. @paulheppler – that’s a very fair point – unless FOG proportionally scale the money pot (e.g. 1 billion GBP for 20 races, higher for more), it’s a bit unfair to push teams to take on more races for no gain and only higher expenses – both from a financial and employee’s work/life balance standpoint.

      I think one must also consider that with a full grid of 13 teams, there will be 3 teams not getting a proportionate cut of the pot, so it would only make sense to set expectations if new teams arrive what the maximum number of races will be for the duration of their contract, so they can budget for that maximum, and not be caught out later.

    2. @paulheppler – he also said that 20 races is good as well, the headline grabs the attention, but reading the item helps too. As to who pays for it – well more races would mean more income to the pots that make up column 1, column 2 etc.

    3. I don’t think Todt necessarily *wants* more races. All he said is that he’s OK with what Liberty Media is doing, be it 20 or 23 races, and that it’s up to them.

    4. A few years ago I singed a binding contract with another human being, common called wedding contract, we signed upon a considerable amount of witness that we would respect the clauses of said contract, such as:

      a) be faithful to one another
      b) to love one another in sickness and health
      c) to re-arrange activities in conformity to the F1 calendar, namely 19 weekends per year
      d)to honor eachother
      e)all the above for all the days of our lives

      I’ve already managed to make two amendments for clause c), for 20 and 21 weekends, but I’m pretty much sure that 23 would be a stretch and a complete breach of the agreement

      1. Channel your inner Bernie and haggle your way towards a 23rd weekend. You could throw in the odd girls night out maybe

      2. @johnmilk – in the time-honoured tradition of F1, remember that there is no contract so binding that cannot be worked around with the appropriate use of smooth talk, charm, and money. Take her out for a “spontaneous date night” on the Thursday leading up to one of these additional F1 weekends, a bit of bling before you want to be left alone for a title decider, etc. ;-)

        1. Yep! … same as the rest of life for the common folk ….. Work hard … pay your lawyers, then housing, then food, then clothing … ex’s expenses ….

      3. @johnmilk Love that post of yours. Very cute. Methinks if you show it to her you might just get your 23 races in, if it comes to that.

        1. @robbie she did ask me the other day what DRS was, and I’ve found out that she follows on Instagram Kimi and Hamilton

          The 6 month daughter, that one is hooked already!

          1. @johnmilk Lol ok now I’m envisioning the little one being rocked to sleep to the sounds of F1 and she’ll be the next Senna (or should that be Kimi or Hamilton) so you’ll actually be at all 23 races in about 19 or 20 years. What do you think, Mom? Sound good?

          2. just need to find a few millions and we are set

  4. It is not question of Vettel’s mistake but stupid Ferrari strategy.
    Kimi should be SACKED with immediate effect since he aas in Monza third Merc driver on the track.
    Leclerc should come in for Ferrari in Singapore as the driver number two.
    Refer to the year 2013 Monza.
    Ferrari was outsmarted also…..But by Sebastian Vettel on pole…
    Kimi was is nobody’s land and Lewis could not be found on the map…

      1. Yes. Like a horse with horns.

        1. @zimkazimka you may not believe it but I’m standing in front of my computer slow clapping

          people don’t appreciate Montoya’s references enough

          1. @ahxshades @zimkazimka @johnmilk – thank you all, I did not get that reference at all until Joao’s comment made me search for and find this: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bkk6KUqBiwu/

    1. Whatever you are taking, Bebana, I want some!

      1. Charles Lecletc . …
        Benvenutoooooo in Ferrari
        Felicamente insieme entrambi in vittoria!!!!

      2. Prancing horse tranquilizers?

    1. This was to the comment by @paulheppler above. It missed its target though!

      I am not in favour of more races. I don’t think it makes much difference to FIA though. I was happy when there was 17,18, 19 etc. I think 23 would add too much cost for teams and would not really add anything to the championships.

      They will be racing on Christmas Eve at this rate ;-)

  5. The problem with COTD is that a third car for all teams which they use to race but for no other reason than to run a young guy and collect data leads to even more pay drivers getting the shot. Teams risk nothing, and they’d get money in return.

  6. You can have too much of a good thing, and we certainly have that. You want 23 races? Forget it.

    1. Have to agree – at a certain point it won’t be ‘more special’ but ‘more common’ to have a race, and then ‘oh not another one’; I am sure my wife already feels like that, seems she’s not alone, right @johnmilk?

      With the four races in 5 (or six? I don’t recall) weekends this year, I have to admit it already started to feel like I was getting that – esp. since it was great weather, and I also wanted to do something with my Saturdays and Sundays.

      1. the pain is real

        1. Quality not quantity!

    2. I would be happier with 16 or 17 races, to be honest. Let’s trim the fat!

  7. In order to beat Hamilton in the WDC, Ferrari needs a solid Kimi performing at his best in order to snatch points from Hamilton, Vettel doesn’t have to fight anyone in the car but himself. In normal circumstances, where Ferrari is the fastest car in qualifying, he should be able to get pole position. He only have to do a clean first lap and he’ll be able to control the race from there (Spa is a good example). He should also remember that losing a place or two at the start of a gp is better than ending in a disaster like Singapore last year.
    So the only problem for Ferrari is Raikkonen beating Vettel in qualifying, well they can sort it out by over-fueling his car, not giving him the latest upgrades or just playing with his engine mappings, but not too much, only to slow him by a tenth or two. I don’t know if the rules allows them to do that, I remember the FIA was controlling McLaren at the end of 2007 when Fernando Alonso accused them by playing with his tyres pressure.

  8. Some of these social media posts, I have no idea what they’re talking about. What’s with that podcast by Nico Rosberg? If cryptic criticism of it satisfies the relevancy criteria for this round-up, shouldn’t it be featured here?
    That tweet of Alan Dove’s desperately needs more acronyms. I can almost understand what he means by ‘CIK’ and ‘KZ’, so it’s not confusing enough. I think I’ve almost fully understood it now after reading it 10 times and realising that the dot in front of Felipe Massa’s Twitter handle isn’t a full stop, so that ‘pressy’ needn’t be some obscure slang word I’ve never heard about, but a corruption of ‘president’. I guess.

    1. True, you need to know beforehand what they are talking about for it to make sense.

    2. welcome to the language of the future, tweeterish, you are character limited on your real life sentences

  9. From the Unibet-article: ‘One year later Ferrari still needs to focus on who they are racing. Certainly not each other, and definitely no one other than Lewis, Valtteri and Mercedes.”
    – Spot on! Ferrari indeed still needs to focus on who they are racing and this applies to Seb especially. He’s thrown away too many points due to not thinking about the ‘big picture’ like Hamilton more often does.

    – Regarding the ‘On this day in F1’ section: I still think the race win was taken away from Hamilton in an unfair manner. It was rather unfair to penalize him for something that didn’t even exist as a rule at the time when the overtaking move in question happened but was only made legal afterwards. A person shouldn’t be punished for doing something that was only made illegal afterwards, i.e., wasn’t illegal to do at the time of doing it. By the same logic, Verstappen should’ve been penalized for his ‘moving under-braking’ defensive move against Hamilton in Japan eight years later even though doing so was only made illegal afterwards.

    1. @jerejj It definitely was a farce. The proper thing to do is to not penalize the move but issue a clarification later on, like how Rosberg’s moves in the 2012 Bahrain GP led to the rule clarification which Verstappen violated this past race.

      It’s things like that that make me glad Hamilton won the title that year.

    2. ”when the overtaking move in question happened but was only made ‘illegal’ afterwards”

  10. Rosberg is in the media game, and playing it like everyone else.

    Found your comment somewhat ironic though, Keith, given the number of times you’ve been pulled up for the same thing!

    Still, this is my favourite F1 information site and the community is second to none.

    1. Found your comment somewhat ironic though, Keith, given the number of times you’ve been pulled up for the same thing!

      Ah someone beat me to the irony post! Keith being the defender of faithfully represented quotes after his “tricks” headline amused me greatly

  11. Really enjoyed the behind-the-scenes Red Bull Vietnam Demo – recommended.

  12. I miss the reporters constantly asking Alonso if he ‘regrets leaving Ferrari’ during their stronger spells and the anticipation every time Vettel won, the haters champing at the bit to claim Vettel has done at Ferrari ‘what Alonso couldn’t . Those were the days…Oh Ferarri…

  13. I miss the reporters constantly asking Alonso if he ‘regrets leaving Ferrari’ during their stronger spells and the anticipation every time Vettel won, the h@ters champing at the bit to claim Vettel has done at Ferrari ‘what Alonso couldn’t . Those were the days…Oh Ferarri…

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