With 24 Grands Prix and six F1 Sprints, 2024 was the longest racing season in the history of Formula 1 to date. More races mean more money, and so the owners of the premier class have continued to expand the calendar in recent years.
In 2003, when Michael Schumacher became world champion for the sixth time, the calendar consisted of the “classic” 16 races. In 2004 there were 18 Grands Prix and in 2005 there were 19. It was only in 2012 that a new record season was held with 20 races, at that time still under the direction of Bernie Ecclestone.
In 2017, the American media group Liberty Media took over Formula 1 and expanded it from the starting point of 20 to 21 races for the first time in 2018 and 22 races for the first time in 2021. 23 races were skipped, so Formula 1 will have 24 Grands Prix in 2024. And the next countries (including Rwanda, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand) are already in the queue.
Formula 1: 25 races are the regulatory limit
The current Concorde Agreement, something like the “constitution” of Formula 1, allows up to 25 events in a calendar year. But Toto Wolff warns: “It’s over the limit. And we’re still traveling comfortably. The mechanics who are setting up and dismantling are flying economy. You can see in the people’s faces now: It’s no longer possible,” says the Mercedes driver. Team boss.
A particularly extreme example was the last tripleheader of the season, with Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi within three consecutive weekends: “Las Vegas is brutal. You only see daylight for a few hours, you go to bed and you don’t know if You should eat or not. Then you wake up at lunchtime, or very early in the morning, we were all different. And that takes you away from the rhythm so much that you can hardly recover from it.”
In a special ORF broadcast on the occasion of the end of the season in Abu Dhabi on Sunday evening, Wolff, Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko and Alexander Wurz, the Austrian broadcaster’s Formula 1 expert who is also chairman of the drivers’ union GPDA, met.
And Wurz also says like Wolff: “Personally, I think it’s too much. I would prefer 16 races. Simply because of the sporting oversaturation.” But: “The worldwide ratings are always good. Formula 1 is booming, and people want to see it. 24 is still possible for the teams, just about acceptable for the engineers, and also for the drivers.”
It is a conflict that has been intensively discussed in recent years. On the one hand, Formula 1 earns from more racing events, and the teams also participate in this money cake and thus benefit financially. On the other hand, the employees of the teams on site at the racetracks are increasingly complaining that the stress is becoming too high and that there is hardly any time left for family and friends due to the increasingly long absences from home.
Marko: If there are more races we need two crews
Even Helmut Marko, who enjoys a reputation as a “tough guy,” now admits: “I think 24 is absolutely at the limit. Although we are privileged in senior management. But you have to think about the mechanics.”
“An example: The race in Las Vegas takes place late at night. You then fly for 14 to 16 hours and it continues in a completely different time zone. I think you have to coordinate the whole sequence better to put these 24 races on the calendar It’s also an environmental thing that you don’t fly all over the world. But in my opinion, more than 24 is not possible unless you start with two crews.
Toto Wolff experienced a particularly extreme example in and around Las Vegas: “I had an appointment, a sponsor event in Hawaii. I was there for exactly 18 hours. I flew over there from Austin for seven hours, then there for 18 hours, and then back again. Hawaii sounds great, but when you’re not on the beach but in a hotel and going to an event, it’s not as fun. That was brutal.”
But even if Formula 1 has announced that it will group the racing calendar better geographically in the future, there is no immediate relief in sight, at least for 2025. 24 Grands Prix are planned again, with a season finale on December 7th. And the tripleheader with Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi remains exactly as it was in 2024.