Mercedes has revealed that discussions are ongoing between the FIA, Formula 1 and the sport’s teams on the possibility of imposing a cap on the number of races that all personnel would be allowed to attend over the course of the season.
The expansion of the Formula 1 calendar to a record 24 races in 2024 is a significant development that will undoubtedly have an impact on the teams and their personnel.
The sheer number of races will increase the travel time and logistical challenges, requiring teams to constantly relocate and adapt to different time zones and working environments.
This constant movement may disrupt personal routines, relationships, and sleep patterns, potentially leading to fatigue, stress, and burnout.
In light of these challenges, teams will need to prioritize the health and well-being of their personnel.
Implementing effective travel strategies, scheduling regular breaks, and providing support services for stress management and mental health are essential measures to mitigate the negative effects of the extended calendar.
Several teams have already spoken of the possibility of rotating crews to safeguard the latter against excess fatigue, but the sport’s cost-cap offers F1’s outfits little room in terms of increasing the head count of their race teams.
But according to Mercedes technical director James Allison, the FIA and F1 are now considering a race-cap for all personnel, including team principals but excluding drivers of course.
“When you consider there is also winter testing to be done, if you’re one of the travelling folk, then that is more than half the year spent on the road, and in a mode of working that is quite tiring, and quite demanding,” Allison explained, speaking on the Performance People podcast.
“All the people back in the factory who give live support to that as well are having to take that burden on their shoulders.
“So the sport has just started to address it because the cost cap means you can’t reasonably contemplate saying, ‘Well, it’s now a sufficiently large number of races that we need to double up on the roles that do the travelling to allow them to alternate races or anything like that’.
“The financial reality of that makes that prohibitive inside the cost cap, so to try to impose some relief on an otherwise very difficult-to-manage season, the sport has just started to debate internally about whether we should have rules.
“Let’s say in a 24-race season, it would mean that no individual – other than the drivers – would be allowed to do all 24 races, a cap imposed, maybe at 20 races, let’s say, just plucking a number from the air.
“It would mean that everyone previously going to have to do the full slog would only be able to do 20 of them, and the teams would have to find it in themselves to put alternative methods of coping with the absence of each member of that travelling community four times per year. That will be an interesting set of gymnastics to cope with.”
Allison contends that all teams “would all face that hurdle together”, so no one would gain an unfair advantage.
“But the ones that wiggle their way through it effectively could turn it into an advantage by organisationally managing that in a slick way,” he added.
“But the net positive would be that at least for a small number of weekends per year, you could rest and recharge if you were otherwise committed to a travelling role.
“That will mean people like Toto, as team principal, would have to respect it as well. The race engineers, the ones who have the closest relationship with the drivers, Bono (Pete Bonington) and Shov (Andrew Shovlin), a relationship that lots of people know about because they hear it on the radio…the drivers would have to hear a different voice four times a year.
“We’d have to figure out how to manage that in a good way.”
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