More free time for teams in '24? 'I don't think anything has changed'

For next season, besides the summer break, Formula 1 has another long period without racing: after the Singapore Grand Prix, there is a break of just under a month. That looks like more free time for team members. Steiner thinks otherwise. "I think nothing has changed. There is a bigger gap there, but then we go longer into the season.  It's not just a win-win here. But obviously for different reasons that needed to be done. It's one of these things. Personally, I don't think it makes a lot of difference," the Italian told the media, including GPblog.

Formula 1 clusters Grands Prix

For next season, Grands Prix have been clustered by continent as much as possible. This will eliminate the need to fly criss-cross the world. "It helps, but it's still 24 races. It's not only about the travel. Travel is one thing, but the intensity of a race weekend is still higher. I think to regionalise it, or how you want to call it, to put back them together, is just better also for sustainability. I think there is a big drive to that one as well. It's just we are more conscious that we are not moving back and forward all the time. There are a few races we cannot do without doing that, because there are long-standing contracts in place at the moment. It will take time to get it really regionalised. But I think FOM and Stefano [Domenicali] are working on it to make it even better than it is now."

Working with different groups of personnel

With several races in a row in the same region, it is easier to move equipment from one place to another. Staying for a longer periode in, say, Asia, on the other hand, means that team personnel are away from home for longer. Some teams choose to work with two groups of staff, for example: when one group sits at home to rest, the other can get to work. Over time, the staffing changes so that the load is distributed among the workers.

"Some people like to rotate a little bit, and we try to do it,  like the IT department, because they have got more chance to rotate back. But mechanics and engineers, it's difficult to rotate. We've got some rotating engineers, performance engineers, stuff like this, but the race engineer, having to rotate that one 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 there is sometimes, if a guy has got something going on at home, a wedding, we have got the capacity to swap them, but it's not like a planned schedule that we have got two race teams, as I said before. We would need to have, if we have got more than 24 races," Steiner said.