more F1 races per year and possible solutions

With an increase in the number of races per year drivers are more and more concerned about the impact on their personal life and the stress on the mechanics and teams.
From the F1 perspective it makes sense, more races is more money.

We also see an increased number of younger drivers coming from the lower ranks that are not able to get mileage or even a single drive.

Why does F1 not turn this into an opportunity?

The obvious solution seems rather simple.

Lets assume 30 races per year
Make 20-24 of these to be competed by the a-team and use the rest for additional drivers. Put in some kind of system which allows the teams to decide if the want to use the a-team or not but making it also impossible to only have the young ones racing at the end of the season only. it must be somewhat a forced distribution
And for sure they have to figure out along the way to relieve the stress on the mechanics. Maybe by simply decreasing the overall number per race.

But i do see quite a few benefits
more races, more money for F1, more money to the teams.
very big increase in the younger kids to show if they have it. if they provide a lower threshold on super-license points, the pool can be pretty wide
Better flow through the ranks, better opportunities to earn super-license points
But probably most of all, more exciting and unpredictable races by adding these "dark horses"

Everybody loves the underdog. see how much Nick de Vriies last last race of 2022 got attention, and Bearman was the real dark horse in last race.

I honestly do not see a lot of negatives but i do like all of you to comment.

 

Liberty doesn't care about the impact of drivers or F1 teams personal lives with having 24 or 30 races per year.

All Liberty cares about is one thing, more races means MORE MONEY to their bottom line.

 

interesting to read now that F1 are considering adding more sprint races. That also could be a possibility to get more talents behind the wheel and provide an expansion of the amount of drivers in F1. It also would provide the team a much better impression of capabilities compared to so fp1 test or incidental replacement by illness or whatever.

 

Exactly.

And with budget caps, the people that this is the hardest on (mechanics) aren't even seeing the proper financial benefit to all this. Mechanics arrive at the track on tuesday/Wednesday to help with build up and typically only really leave by monday evening latest. 24 races a year is already 144 days a year away from home traveling. Acceptable if you make a decent salary (150K a year+) or are very young with no significant other/family, unacceptable at all in any other situation.

 

To the original question - if you use a "b" team for some of the races, especially the drivers, I think the ticket prices and attendance wouldn't gather the appropriate economic value.

I think they should just bring back testing, add a budget exception for it and cap the exception at some price ($25M or some other agreeable number). No testing sucks, it leaves everything too stale.

With the sprint races, originally I was more against it, however I actually appreciate those weekends more now. Practice isn't as interesting as an extra qualifying session and race.

 

Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting.

But NASCAR does 43 races per year, most of them longer than 2 hours.
Are the current F1 drivers ******* ??

A good number of NASCAR cars are completely torn up after each race.
Are current F1 mechanics/builders ******* ??

...

 

NASCAR happens only in one country, right ? How many countries F1 visit during one season ?

How many miles NASCAR teams travel to attend their races compared to F1 teams ?

Maybe we could start by examining that ?

I hope F1 never become anything like NASCAR.

 

NASCAR sucks

 

Let's say it appeals to a certain audience.

The recipe wouldn't work everywhere.

 

not only is NASCAR entirely inside the US, the majority of the races are within a 90 minute flight of Charlotte NC, where virtually all of the teams are based.

they also "only" do 36, not the 43 mentioned above.

and, there are NASCAR-specific charter flights (mostly Embraer type regional jets) to each race for most of the crew guys, significantly increasing quality of life.

IMO, F1 needs +/- 18 races a year. 20 was too many. 24 is insanity

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24 races is too many for me as a fan. I want to watch and stay up to date, but I also like summer days to get out and have fun. Not to mention the always long list of things I need to do.

 

I agree. for me most races are during the day time and in summer many days sitting inside...just not very nice

 

I am thinking more about the staff, the engineers and technicians, the mechanics working in F1 subjected to enormous pressure, long hours and frequent travelling, and who don't have, them, the choice to switch off for some weekends, like the fans can do.
As most of the teams are based in UK, I am wondering how they manage to observe British Employement Laws. It's OK to pay more, and offer financial compensation, but that doesn't absolve any employer for not giving enough rest time, regular returns at home and visits to the family. I know that oil companies employing personnel on offshore oil rigs had to raise at least 2 teams of workers and rotate periodically them to satisfy the law.

 

If you don't want to be an F1 driver I think Taco Bell and Walmart are hiring-

Crybaby *******-

 

I think most of a teams employees are part of the salary cap. If this is the case, you have to wonder if the race mechanics and engineers are limited in their pay. Going from 18-20 races a year all the way up to 24 and more in the future deserves a big raise IMO. I just don't know if they could get it.

 

see my post #4...

 

As to the premise of the thread: I don’t see how “more money” into F1 necessarily improves the sport. It only improves the balance sheets of the owners. If it were possible to plot on a graph, I think we’d see that as “more money” flowed into F1 the more sport flowed out. I think the two lines probably intersected some time in the 1990s.

 

Quite simply....an increase of frequency will only deminish the quality of the racing. Liberty is milking F1 fans for everything they can squeeze out of them, and then they will unload a declining sport onto some poor chump organization that will rapidly realize that they bought lemons, not lemonade.

 

Acc. To The race. It seems that some a at liberty are reading here as well as my original idea of creating a youngster race is currently indeed a consideration

Interested in how this will develop

 

It's all in one country, F1 travels the world