How F1 teams manage the punishing reality of F1’s relentless schedule

When Bernie Ecclestone sat down for dinner with Liberty Media’s Chase Carey and Sean Bratches at the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix, they enjoyed a wide-ranging talk with host Donald Mackenzie, head of CVC Capital, at that time the ultimate owner of Formula 1. In Manish Pandey’s documentary Lucky!, chronicling the life and times of the man who built the business of F1, Ecclestone reflects upon that pivotal meeting on Mackenzie’s yacht.

“Business wasn’t discussed there at all,”
 he recalls. “I think what they really thought in the end, the bottom line, was simple. ‘Here we’ve got an 80-year-old guy that’s been running this company for 40 years. Imagine us, proper American business people, if we had the
 company what we could do’.”

What Liberty could do was take everything Ecclestone had already established and grow it further. When it subsequently secured the takeover, a key element of its growth strategy
 was to have more races.

It is the most straightforward way to grow revenue from promoters, broadcasters, sponsors, merchandise and corporate hospitality sales.
 It translates into greater profitability, the sine
qua non for a publicly listed company focused
 on driving shareholder value.

Put simply, more races is good for business. But at what cost, particularly to the women and men who have to put on the show no fewer than 22 times this season?

It should have been 24, of course, but China was cancelled owing to ongoing Covid restrictions and Imola was called off when many were just setting out to the track amid catastrophic regional flooding. This has left race team personnel to face a season which includes six double and a triple-header (down from two due to the Imola cancellation prior to the Monaco and Spanish GPs), which requires them to race in Austin, Mexico City and Sao Paulo on successive weekends.

“In 2023 our biggest fight is not on the track, it’s not in the pitlane, it’s not on the grid, it’s not in the paddock,” says Peter Crolla, team manager at Haas. “The biggest thing we’re up against is a calendar that jumps across continents and time zones. The human attrition impact of that is massive.”

The human attrition of working in F1 is severe, says Haas team manager Crolla

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

For travelling team members this translates into far more than 22 weekends.

“A race weekend for us, from absolute start to absolute finish, is 10 days,” continues Crolla. “So much of what goes on in the background to create that race spectacle is never seen. When we break into a garage there’s a three-day lifecycle of actually getting this thing into a working condition. Then again, it’s a day and a half to take it all down at the end, so that little bit that [fans] see from Friday morning through to Sunday evening is just a small percentage.”

The prospect of spending up to 22 weeks, six months of the year, between airports, hotels and racetracks is not for everyone. The Formula 1 season has fast become like a military tour of duty. One which appeals to younger staff with fewer commitments to partners, children and family back home.

“When people get to a certain age, they
 start having families and children, you can’t be away for 180 to 200 days a year and have that family life,” says Crolla.

"We’ve got people that can step into the breach for mechanics’ and garage technician roles. But there are certain roles in the organisation there isn’t a backstop for" Peter Crolla

“We’re seeing the average age of garage-based staff probably go from people in their 30s,
 10 or 15 years ago, now edging down into the
 20s. We’re going younger and younger in the people that we’re bringing into the company, because those are the people that have the, let’s
 call it, social availability.”

More popularity means more work

Against a background of massive audience
 growth – the much-lauded ‘Netflix effect’ – for the drivers the increased schedule means more demands, from media, sponsors and F1 itself.
 The result is a growth in the number of marketing personnel needed to support them and also to manage their schedules.

There has been a development which will be greeted with horror by those who measure their personal worth in terms of unbroken grand prix attendance. Going to all the races no longer holds the cachet it once did. Increasingly, it’s now an indication of stature when a team member,
 race official or even broadcaster can elect which races to attend, which to skip.

“We’re starting to implement a fairly light rota on performance engineering,” confirms Crolla. “We’ve got a race team support group back in the factory, whereby if people need some time off for births, deaths and marriages, we’ve got people that can step into the breach for mechanics’ and garage technician roles.

The task of setting up and packing down before and after a grand prix means a full event takes up 10 days

Photo by: John Toscano / Motorsport Images

“But there are certain roles in the organisation there isn’t a backstop for – team principal,
 team manager, team coordinator – that we don’t have multiples of. Those people are not irreplaceable, but quite critical.”

For the majority of travelling personnel, skipping races is neither desired nor an option. They want to be there, it’s a lifetime’s ambition realised, a privilege they enjoy bearing in mind that, for larger teams, travelling personnel are
 less than 10% of the workforce. Most employees work at the factory. It’s a slightly different story at Haas, however, which has only 240 staff spread across its sites
 in the USA, UK and Italy.

“We’ve got anywhere between 90 and 110 staff at every race, depending on how busy we’re going to be and where it is,” says Crolla. “The hardest thing is keeping everybody standing upright, doing their job properly, and just able to function as a human being.”

A global traveller’s survival guide

Staff wellbeing has never been more important as the rigours of frequent travel, disrupted sleep patterns and eating on the go take their toll.

“Health and wellbeing is very important to help the team get through the long calendar,” says Ron Meadows, Mercedes’ hugely experienced sporting director. “We become a family who support each other. We also have people based at Brackley [Mercedes’ HQ] that are dedicated to our health and wellbeing.”

One is Chris Armstrong, Mercedes’ wellbeing programme manager.

“When we talk about wellbeing, we talk about three main elements; physical, mental and recovery,” says Armstrong. “From a physical standpoint we want to make sure team members are physically active, both in the workplace and at home. From a mental standpoint we want to make sure that all team members are happy, but also able to focus.”

The recovery element comes down to workload, ensuring team members get sufficient rest and the equally important aspect of overseeing what they’re eating and drinking.

“They’re working from the minute curfew
 lifts to the minute it restarts,” says Crolla. “It’s often a battle for them to eat and keep hydrated. They need those to function properly, stay focused and do the best job they can.”

Keeping team staff fit and healthy is a dedicated role given the enormous toll placed on them

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

This also means striking a balance in terms of when personnel travel to an event, and the days they have off. An extra day to acclimatise to a major time zone change can be worthwhile, but that also means a day fewer at home with family.

At Haas the team’s health and wellbeing support is provided by performance physiotherapist Faith Atack-Martin, Dan Martin, head of performance coaching and sports science – whose responsibilities include nutrition and diet – and Andy Wolfenden, a strength and conditioning coach.

Within her role, Atack-Martin plans social outings for the team. In Melbourne she arranged for the team to attend an Australian rules football match. She also coordinates track runs.

Haas has launched an initiative whereby the team is planning to run the equivalent of the distance between its Banbury base and Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina circuit. For each kilometre a member of staff runs the team contributes funding to charities related to two team members who sadly succumbed to cancer, Harvey Cook
 and Jennifer Harman.

Travelling personnel have to fully commit to a demanding, non-negotiable schedule, the double-headers requiring some staff to be away from home for 17-18 days at a time, the triple-headers more than three weeks on the road

The advent of hybrid working, which existed prior to the Covid pandemic but has now become more mainstream, is proving helpful to staff who travel to races but can work from home when back with the family. Crolla personally finds this to have been a positive change. Remotely based staff are also playing an increased role in supporting travelling teams, and not only in making race strategy calls.

“We support the track with people who can help analysing information, gathering extra information but without the focus being on the car itself; from an aero perspective, tyre perspective, setup perspective or strategy,” says Dominique Riefstahl, Mercedes’ race support team leader and test engineer.

“The positives of using the RSR (Race Support Room) is efficiency,” he adds. “Running the entire RSR is cheaper than sending one person trackside for a year. We also have the advantage that we’re connected live to the track. We also get to go home and see our families every night and we’re not bound by curfews, so we can offset our hours and make sure we make best use of the time.”

The advent of curfews has unquestionably helped teams ensure travelling staff get sufficient ‘down time’, the opportunity to grab a decent meal and a proper sleep. It is far removed from the era when F1 mechanics all too often pulled
 all-nighters, then emptied the minibar in a
 quest to switch off.

F1 has begun to embrace remote working with Mercedes employing its Race Support Room to bolster strategic decision-making

Photo by: Mercedes

The curfews on a Wednesday and Thursday night are followed by a requirement to have the covers on the cars three hours after second practice, effectively a hard-stop. Similarly, on Saturday, teams must have both the covers and FIA seals on the cars two hours after qualifying.

“People can then tidy their work areas, start thinking about what they’re packing up for Sunday night, because the car’s now in the condition that it’s going to race in,” says Crolla. “They can just try and make their life a little easier on Sunday by spending a bit of time preparing on a Saturday night, plus it gives the guys the opportunity to go out, have a meal, see some friends, relax and socialise a little.”

Ultimately travelling personnel have to fully commit to a demanding, non-negotiable schedule, the double-headers requiring some staff to be away from home for 17-18 days at a time, the triple-headers more than three weeks on the road.

The cost of living glamorously

While Instagram may showcase drivers and team principals flying by private jet, then helicoptering from airport to track, the reality for team personnel is more prosaic. It’s economy class and a shared room for most, business class and a single room for senior staff and engineers who have to return to base, then work, between races.

“An economy travel, shared-room occupant costs us about £45k a year while a business [class] single-room occupier is more than double that,” says Crolla.

In a post-Covid environment in which long-haul economy and business class tickets are costing teams as much as 50% more than in 2019, these costs are significant, but the reality is that more races and increased revenue also means a bigger prize fund. Every team benefits. In 2021 the teams shared USD$1.068bn, while last season that increased to USD$1.157bn with a further increase predicted this year.

F1’s CEO Stefano Domenicali has confirmed there is sufficient interest to drive the calendar up to an eye-watering 30 races. Teams are already beginning to consider what heading beyond 25 grands prix will mean for their travelling staff. Crolla is certain it will require a major change in the way F1 operates.

Will team principals skipping races become increasingly prominent as the calendar continues to swell?

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“It’s not necessarily the number of races, it’s the time away, and how that interacts with personal and family life,” he says. “That would require massive, wholesale change to the sport, not just in terms of how a race weekend is structured, because you’re then breaching into more months of the year, but how would the teams actually operate.

“You can’t go beyond 24 races without really pushing human attrition to the limit and beyond. To go to a number starting with a three you’re going to need two teams, and that’s going to need an overhaul of all the financial regulations.”

With 24 races already set for next season, Malaysia eyeing a return, Liberty keen on South Africa and countries such as Germany and France oddly absent, further growth seems certain. The teams will have to cope. Inevitably they will invest further in staff wellbeing, then reach further into the pipeline of youthful talent eager to work in Formula 1.

Amid increasing pressure on teams, the need to continue investing in fresh blood is unlikely to cease

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images