F1 Triple Header Was not Easy to Manage

F1 was forced to change its summer schedule, resulting in its first ever triple header of races. This was because, the sport had to accommodate the World Cup Final as well as the Wimbledon Final. The tight schedule posed a huge logistics challenge to the teams. Most of the team personnel could not even see their family members for almost three weeks.

The 2018 championship calendar consists of 21 races, equalling the record set in 2016. This and the FIFA World Cup clashes meant that Liberty Media faced difficulties finalising this year’s calendar. So, it was decided that the French, Austrian and British Grand Prix would form the first ever triple-header of races in F1.

Despite there being no better alternative, teams are pushing against a repeat of such a situation. They argue that organising these events involved huge commitment from team members and also resulted in higher costs.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner revealed that logistics was the most challenging for his team.

“It’s certainly expensive, for moving cars, parts, people in such short succession. You’ll see here (Spielberg) we have a different hospitality facility. The usual Energy Station just simply wouldn’t have been possible for it to complete the triple headers, so, of course, there’s cost associated with that.”

“There’s a drain on resource because obviously an awful lot of components going backwards and forwards to the UK. We’re fortunate that the final race of the triple header for us is where the team is obviously based. Obviously harder for teams not based in the UK – but it’s certainly tough.”

Toro Rosso team boss Franz Tost also pointed out that the holiday time leads to more intense traffic on motorways. This leads to more stress in terms of transporting the equipment.

He said, “That’s a real big challenge, because going from the South of France to Austria and then to England is a big challenge, especially from the logistics side, because as we know, we are now in holiday time. That means there is a lot of traffic out there and we have a lot of problems on the borders because of the checks which they make over there.“