Guenther Steiner has warning for F1 after 24-race calendar announced

Haas’ Guenther Steiner believes next year’s 24-race calendar is at the very limit of what’s possible in the sport.

F1 has confirmed a 24-race calendar for next year, after also previously scheduling the same record-breaking number for this year – cancellations of the Chinese and Emilia Romagna Grand Prix reducing that number.

The extensive calendar, running from early March with a Bahrain season opener, will run until the final race in early December – the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Guenther Steiner on why 24 races is the limit

Speaking to media on Thursday ahead of the British Grand Prix, Steiner had a warning for F1 about why 24 races is the realistic limit for the current model of working in the sport.

“I think 24 races is the limit with the business model we’ve got now,” he told media, including PlanetF1.com.

“If you have more races, it needs to be a big step, and also a big step financially that you can actually have two teams running it because, otherwise, I think it’s very difficult to attract people to work in Formula 1 – because it is putting an effort in.

“From my side, obviously, I come on Wednesday, but some of the people, the setup crew, they are away sometimes months in a row – that’s a long time.

“I think that, for them, it is more difficult than for me personally, obviously, for us personally as well, it’s not easy to be away 24 weekends for racing, but I think there is also a saturation factor.”

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It’s in F1’s desire to break away from its traditional structure and race scheduling that Steiner believes the growing calendar is acceptable.

“Now we have 24 races, if you have 24 races that are all the same, I think it would be too many,” he said.

“But, because they are so different now in itself, people always look forward to something – you’ve got six sprint weekends so people go ‘Let’s go the sprint weekend’, then you’ve got the night races.

“Now, we’ve got two Saturday races next year, it’s a little bit of a mix. So you always have something special to look for. But can you imagine 24 races, like in the old days, when they were all cookie cutter – starting at three o’clock, finishing at five, you will say after 20, ‘I’ve got enough’ but, now, there’s always some newness and different things. So I think that makes it interesting. I think we have reached the limit with the business model we have at the moment.”

Is F1 calendar regionalisation the answer?

With F1 making moves to try grouping races by region, in a bid to cut down on the grueling travel schedules and reduce carbon emissions, the Japanese Grand Prix has moved to an early-season slot – swapping with Azerbaijan.

But regionalisation of the calendar only reduces the stress a little, according to Steiner.

“It helps, but it’s still 24 races,” he said.

“It’s not only about the travel, the travel is one thing, but the intensity at a race weekend is still higher.

“Regionalising it is just better for sustainability, there’s a big drive to that as well. It’s just to be more conscious that we’re not moving back and forth all the time. There are a few races we cannot do without doing that because there are, obviously, long-standing contracts in place at the moment.

“It will take time to get it really regionalised, but I think FOM and Stefano is working on it to make it even better than it is now.”

As for a rotating crew of team personnel, Steiner said it’s merely a band-aid solution and not workable across every department of the team.

“Some people like to rotate a little bit and we try to do it, some like the IT department because they have got more chance to rotate,” he said.

“But mechanics and engineers – it’s difficult to rotate, we have got some rotating engineers, performance engineers, stuff like this, but the race engineers, rotating them is difficult for the driver because he has to switch.

“Mechanics, a lot of mechanics like to do all races, because they like to be with the team, with the car. So it’s sometimes if a guy has got something going on at home, a wedding or something, we have got the capacity to swap them but it’s not like a planned schedule that you have got two race teams which we would need to have if we have more than 24 races.”

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