With the end of the 2023 Formula 1 season, teams and drivers are beginning to prepare for next year. Red Bull will try to be crowned champions for a third consecutive year in the Constructors’ Championship, trying to expand its hegemony. However, Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Aston Martin will do everything possible to prevent this from happening.
After it was announced that the 2024 season of motorsport’s top category will have a total of 24 races (two more races than this year’s following the cancellation of the race at Imola), many people began to question the logistics on the part of the category to accommodate the large number of events.
We have to remember that the last two races of 2023 were a back-to-back between the first Las Vegas Grand Prix and the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. This fact meant that the drivers and all team members had to adapt to a 12-hour time change in about three days. With this as background, personnel began to feel sick and under the weather during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, including two drivers: Esteban Ocon and George Russell.
Photo Credit: Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team
Next year the Chinese Grand Prix will be added to the calendar again, which had been removed since the start of the pandemic. The main problem that has been found in the 2024 calendar is that the season will end with a triple-header between Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, exactly the same problem that the team members faced a few weeks ago due to the time change between Las Vegas and Middle Eastern countries.
The person who highlighted this serious problem was Mercedes driver George Russell. The British star confirmed that many staff in the team got sick due to the time changes and the few days they have to adapt.
“The drivers, we have it best from every single person in this paddock. The way we travel, we’re in a very fortunate position,” George Russell stated in the post-race press conference.
“But everybody up and down the paddock, I’ve got so many mechanics who are ill, people in the engineers’ office, just really struggling with the constant time zone shifts, the body not knowing where you are, eating at different times, staying in different hotels, different environments, different climates,” The Mercedes driver commented.
“The body’s getting confused. There are talks for next year about personnel being regulated so that they can’t do every single race. I think that would be a good thing.
“I don’t think it’s sustainable for 4,000 people to do 24 races a season, especially when you see how geographically it still doesn’t make a huge amount of sense.
“I’ve been really ill the last two weeks. Firstly in Vegas with a big fever – I couldn’t sleep and just felt awful. And then I’ve had a horrendous cough that stayed with me all week and in the car,” Russell confessed about his own condition. “I was coughing every single lap but when you’re strapped into the car, you can’t breathe. You can’t take a deep breath in to get the cough out. So, it was just constantly with me.”
There are several issues that have to be checked in this off-season regarding the 2024 season. One of the problems experienced during this season is the lack of concern about the weather conditions in certain countries.
Before the Las Vegas Grand Prix, very little was said about the low temperatures that there were going to be during the weekend, this being a night-held Grand Prix.
But the high and extreme temperatures experienced during the Qatar Grand Prix was alarming, where several of the drivers had health complications due to the high temperatures they had to endure throughout the weekend.
Another of them will have to be the issue that Mercedes driver George Russell emphasises. For fans, having 24 races a year may be extremely entertaining.
However, it is too physically costly for the members of the teams and the category in general, especially when it comes to double or triple-headers.
