Formula 1 teams expect the sport will not repeat last year’s triple-header of races in 2020 even if the schedule expands to 22 rounds.
The 2020 F1 calendar is expected to set a new record for the number of races in a single season.Last year’s 21-race schedule featured races in France, Austria and Britain on three consecutive weekends. However Racing Point team principal Otmar Szafnauer doubts the sport will repeat that arrangement.
“It was not the right thing to do,” he said. “Even if we go to 22 races there won’t be a triple-header.”
The sport’s commercial rights holder Liberty Media is keen to add more races to bring in more revenue from hosting fees. But Szafnauer pointed out that as the calendar continues to grow, teams will reach a “tipping point” where they need to hire more staff, increasing their costs. He said as many as “24, 25 [races] has been talked about.”
“I think that’s a lot. We’re going to stretch the mechanics, the employees and it’s a lot of travel, it’s a lot of racing.
“22 next year if we don’t have a triple header is achievable. We’ll see what that’s like, we haven’t done that yet. After that we have to be careful that we don’t overdo it.”
While the number of races is expected to rise to 22 next year, this is set to be accompanied by a reduction in pre-season testing from eight days to six.
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DAllein (@)
9th August 2019, 13:32
Of course there will be no tripple-header…
There will be quadruple-header instead.
Jere (@jerejj)
9th August 2019, 16:20
I think this has been quite clear for a while already, so no surprise on this front.
”hire more staff”
– And achieving that would be ‘easier said than done’ for the smaller teams, especially with a budget cap.
Johns
9th August 2019, 17:05
I like the idea of Liberty Media renting out venues instead of charging hosting fees. Whoever came up with that good idea.
PT (@pt)
9th August 2019, 17:35
That’s too many races, going to the point of even the fans getting saturated by it.
khm78 (@khm)
10th August 2019, 7:57
Too many??
I wish they raced every Sundag….
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
9th August 2019, 18:23
I really don’t see how 22 races without (at least) a triple-header is going to work, because a certain amount of time is needed to develop and test the next edition of each car.
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
9th August 2019, 20:27
I agree. It seems to me the push to 22 races will push the cars more towards being more standardised and less “prototype-ised”, which has traditionally been the … (sorry, I can’t think of the phrase) … the rational behind why F1 isn’t a spec series.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
10th August 2019, 8:33
What the teams want and what they get has always been a fair distance apart.
As it was with CVC before it Liberty’s only interest is getting as much revenue from races as possible and if that means tripe headers to fit that then that’s what the teams will get.
That I’m afraid is never going to change and could potentially get worse.