The ways F1 can help solve burnout in 2024's 24-race marathon

"Yeah, I'm f***ed," Christian Horner dryly announced to the Autosport Awards attendees at Grosvenor House, when asked by emcee Natalie Pinkham if he was tired after a lengthy 2023 Formula 1 season. After all, the Abu Dhabi finale had come to a close just a week prior, with Las Vegas taking place a week before that.

It was a 12-hour timezone swing to get used to between the two rounds while working on an already-strange schedule in Las Vegas. And that's not taking into account the time spent in a metal tube crisscrossing several continents, inhaling the other passengers' recycled breaths as winter colds circulate throughout the cabin.

Horner and others in his position at least get the minor added comfort of business-class flights, but that doesn't make it any less exhausting. At least winning the John Bolster Award makes his endeavour worthwhile...oh, and something about an F1 title as well.

The cost of the F1 calendar has been talked about frequently: by us in the media, by drivers, and by the personnel who are unable to rotate as much as is ideal. Many of F1's unsung heroes have been pulled into the magnetar of traversing diametrically opposed timezones and working late nights. On the driving front, George Russell and Esteban Ocon were both unwell to varying degrees in Abu Dhabi; through a persistent cough in the post-race press conference, Russell admitted that the drivers have it slightly easier compared to others in the paddock. But it needn't be so difficult in the first place.

That Las Vegas, with its time-bending schedule that effectively operates in line with countries on the other side of the world, opens a triple-header next year is something that fills many of F1's unsung heroes with a powerful sense of dread. The longer the night, the more dread.

There are 24 races next year to add to the already-extruded workload. Calendar grouping, although slightly improved, still needs work as 2024 struggles to shake off the need to cram in triple-headers. If Horner says that the season has left him "f***ed", then imagine how those teasing the limits of track curfew times are feeling.

Photo by: Jake Grant / Motorsport Images

Horner didn't hold back when discussing his exhaustion upon becoming the latest recipient of the John Bolster Award for technical excellence at Sunday's Autosport Awards

Why doesn't F1 simply do a better job of monitoring its calendar to minimise burnout? Simply put, money talks here. Sports calendars the world over are becoming more inordinate too; a player in the Football League (that's Championship, League One, and League Two) has to navigate 46 league matches, FA Cup matches, League Cup matches, and possibly the EFL Trophy if you play in League One or League Two. And maybe, if you're registered to a smaller nation, there are international matches to consider.

Such prolonged exposure to a series of events cause physical and mental fatigue. In their paper "Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry" for the World Psychiatry Association, Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter cite burnout as "psychological syndrome emerging as a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job". Flying is stressful. Working is stressful. Being judged by the result on a Sunday? That's naturally going to add stress to a situation.

The paper denotes three responses from those suffering with burnout: "overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment". Effectively, this means going through the motions and waiting for a break.

It's not the FIA, but FOM that agrees deals for the expansion of the calendar, so the governing body is at least doing its bit to try to mitigate the schedule swelling. But it can affect the rules, and introduce further measures to limit staff burnout

The study goes on to say that this will have negative implications for work colleagues, and result in potential medical issues depending on the extent of the problem. There's usually a flippant maxim that people 'work themselves into an early grave', but this can be true without the right amount of care; cardiovascular issues are linked to burnout as explained by Toker, Shirom, Shapira et al in the study "The association between burnout, depression, anxiety, and inflammation biomarkers: C‐reactive protein and fibrinogen in men and women".

There's a correlation between burnout and declining mental health as well. Although it's too much of an oversimplification to say that burnout causes clinical depression, many of the symptoms experienced are common to both. Either way, it requires the attention of a professional to fully understand a single person's individual scenario.

Which leads onto an argument commonly perpetuated in the dark nooks and crannies of social media: why don't you just quit? Do something else. People would give an insert-unspecified-body part-here to do what you do. But that's not the best way to cut it, because it boils the argument down to "you're unhappy with the current conditions, why not leave instead of trying to create a more favourable situation?" It implies that F1, or indeed any other motorsport category, has always been of this magnitude.

The FIA has taken measures to limit burnout, to its credit. There are shutdowns in both the summer and the winter to ensure that staff can rest, rather than continue to toil away under the pressures of performance gains and design deadlines. And it's not the FIA, but FOM that agrees deals for the expansion of the calendar, so the governing body is at least doing its bit to try to mitigate the schedule swelling.

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Should rules be enshrined that require staff rotation or cap the events they can attend during triple headers?

But it can affect the rules, and introduce further measures to limit staff burnout. If triple-headers are to continue, a rule mandating that everyone except a very select quantity of key staff can only work a maximum of two of the three races would be a sensible way of imposing limits and necessitating rotation between trackside personnel.

That could perhaps go further, perhaps through introducing a hard cap of 16 races for a trackside engineer or technician per season. Assuming teams already rotate staff, then this would have little impact on the cost cap, but the FIA can theoretically ring-fence a portion of the $135m-plus-change limit to sanction this.

Better yet, eliminate triple headers altogether. The 2024 calendar has managed include three of them - a Barcelona-Red Bull Ring-Silverstone trio in the first half of the year, and then a double-triple at the end of the year of Austin-Mexico-Brazil, and Las Vegas-Qatar-Abu Dhabi. The second triple is the most baffling, given that it succeeds a near month-long gap between it and the Singapore Grand Prix.

Some might see it as a good gap to have for the final gruelling part of the year, but it seems bizarre when there's ample space to split them up into three double-headers. Marketing forces will always prevail, it seems, but let's play with a hypothetical calendar with a stronger degree of calendar grouping. Here's a theoretical calendar that should not only offer more opportunities for breaks but eliminate triple headers entirely and reduce the distances that freight has to travel.

1. Bahrain - 2 March
2. Saudi Arabia - 9 March
3. Australia - 24 March
4. Japan - 7 April
5. China - 14 April
6. Imola - 28 April
7. Monaco - 12 May
8. Miami - 26 May
9. Canada - 2 June
10. Spain - 16 June
11. Austria - 30 June
12. Great Britain - 7 July

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

The British GP next year will be the third leg of the year's first triple header, which our hypothetical calendar addresses

13. Hungary - 21 July
14. Belgium - 28 July
15. Netherlands - 25 August
16. Italy - 1 September
17. Azerbaijan - 15 September
18. Singapore - 22 September
19. United States - 6 October
20. Mexico - 13 October
21. Brazil - 27 October
22. Las Vegas - 3 November
23. Qatar - 17 November
24. Abu Dhabi - 24 November

Through this theoretical calendar, triple headers have been removed. To break up one double-header, a Japan-China back-to-back has been introduced, but this helps to create space later down the line to split the Imola-Monaco double and allow the Barcelona race to stand on its own. Miami has been pushed back by three weeks to link up with an earlier Canada round, minimising the need for transatlantic cargo and movement of staff.

Teams have begun to employ mental coaches and psychologists to help personnel cope with the added mental strains of the job, but the championship's governance should assume a duty of care to some degree

The season also ends earlier in this suggested calendar, as the chasm-like gaps between triple headers have been ironed out. One surmises that most would prefer to work a double-header with a two-week break in between them rather than longer gaps between triple headers. Finishing before December might also be a preference, although the Qatar-Abu Dhabi double could be easily split again if the season was to run into a further week.

Although the double-header between Azerbaijan and Singapore is not ideal, this has been untouched given that this writer experienced the difficulty of the Azerbaijan-Miami double, which involved flying in the wrong direction first to add several hours onto a six-hour direct journey to an intermediary London stop.

There are undoubtedly more ways that F1 and the FIA can help to limit the adverse effects of burnout. Teams have begun to employ mental coaches and psychologists to help personnel cope with the added mental strains of the job, but the championship's governance should assume a duty of care to some degree.

One suspects that some reading this would refute the above points and return to the clarion call of "if you don't like it, leave". Sure, people could stop sitting in the rickety, uncomfortable chair - but they might not have anywhere else to sit. Putting a cushion on the chair doesn't solve the inherent issue, but it makes sitting in it far more pleasurable. It's up to F1 to provide the cushion.

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Will the F1 paddock be close to breaking point by the time it gets to Abu Dhabi next year?