Since the sport’s founding in 1950, Formula One has been expanding at an amazing rate. In the sport’s inaugural season, there were seven championship races. Now, over sixty years later, we have nine-teen Grand Prix events in a single season. This is a phenomenal growth. In 2015, the FIa has announced that there will be at least twenty events run. With so many Grands Prix added, it is inevitable that the calendar will continue to grow in the years to come, but how many more Grands Prix can we really add?
An uninformed fan could say to make the races take place every weekend, eliminate the August Summer Break and eliminate mid-season testing. Although it’s true that that making these changes would allow for more events to be run in the season, this would have an extremely negative toll on the sport.
Racing every weekend would seriously cut down the amount of time that a team can spend in the factory for research and development to upgrade their cars and equipment. Having races every other weekend gives teams over a week to work before racing again. Since the races are all around the globe, transportation costs would go through the roof. Not to mention the mental and physical fatigue this would place on the drivers and staff.
Eliminating the August Summer Break in another horrible idea that many fans discussed during the raceless month. We’ve saw teams like Caterham, that have a microscopic amount of funds. In a sport that costs so much to compete in, the summer break is a vital cost cutting strategy. During the summer break, teams could save millions of dollars. For the teams that have a seemingly unlimited budget like Mercedes, Red Bull or Ferrari, this may seem like an unnecessary drop in the bucket, but it could mean the difference between finishing the season or having to make an early exit for smaller teams.
But the most atrocious idea that I have ever heard was to eliminate the mid-season testing. Doing this would take away what makes the sport of Formula One so unique and interesting to follow. Not only is F1 a race between drivers, but it is also a technological battle between teams to develop the fastest and most advanced car. Mid-season testing allows teams to test upgrades and get data to develop this cutting edge technology. This also gives them a chance to work out all of the bugs before racing, so that there is less of a chance of an upgrade failure that could potentially ruin their entire season.
So if we can’t change things like this, is there even a chance that we can reach thirty-six races a year like NASCAR? Probably not. We have hovered at about nineteen races per season for roughly a decade and we are running out of reasonable solutions to cram more races into such a short season. But having nineteen races a season isn’t bad. It makes the championship battles tight and prevents people from pulling away with the title. Do we really need more races?
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Assumptions made in any analysis contained within this article are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author.
