Imola (Italy) (AFP)
The F1 teams could have to review their organization, they explained Friday, to adapt to the 2021 calendar project comprising 23 races, including one in Saudi Arabia, and several sequences of three Grands Prix in three weeks.
Twenty-three GPs in one season, according to this draft which was presented to them on Monday, would constitute a new record, the previous one being 21. Twenty-two races should have been organized in 2020 but the calendar has been reduced to 17 rounds because of of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"It would represent a huge job for the mechanics", who in addition to their work on the cars assemble and dismantle the garages and the meeting spaces and reception of the stables, recalled Friday Christian Horner, the principal team of Red Bull, to the day before qualifying for the Grand Prix of Emilia-Romagna in Imola.
"These are 23 weeks away from home. We are approaching the saturation point at which it would take two teams," said the Briton.
"We hope to set up a system of rotation between the staff so that no one (except the pilots, editor's note) has to go to all the races," said Williams' team principal Simon Roberts.
His AlphaTauri counterpart, Franz Tost, also mentions the track of additional mechanics and engineers and indicates that his team is aware that it will have to "organize" if 23 GPs take place in 2020.
"There is a chance, with the pandemic, that races will be canceled," recalls Guenther Steiner, for Haas, who is delighted at the blow of this expanded calendar project.
"Twenty-three GPs, it would be hard for the teams, adds the latter. If that continues, we will have to find solutions such as shorter weekends."
Two-day weekends, as is the case at Imola with a single free practice session on Saturday morning instead of three Friday and Saturday, this is the option offered by the Thai driver Alexander Albon (Red Bull) and taken over by Horner.
Initially planned for 2021 and then postponed to 2022 to save money in the face of the scale of the health crisis, the upcoming change in regulations already provides for no longer organizing media activities or with spectators on the circuits on Thursday, but only from Friday morning.
© 2020 AFP