The Formula 1 Calendar | F1 | 2022 | Motorsport

If you’re a Formula 1 fan, then one of your past times is debating the F1 calendar.

Fellow Is It Fast? Contributor Jesse Billington and I even did a podcast episode about it along with Formula 3 commentator and Motormouth Podcast Host Harry Benjamin (available on YouTube if you want a listen).

The number of races and where those races should be are always hotly contested – and even more so in recent months.

F1 supremo Stefano Domenicali seems very keen to keep adding more and more races to the calendar, (sometimes at the expense of other fan favourite tracks) but this has received mixed reactions from the fanbase. But this article isn’t about that – at least not entirely.

Image: F1

Instead, I think that the entire F1 calendar should be re-organized in a completely different way. Every year, we as fans watch F1 travel all over the globe to go racing. One week, it’s in Australia, then Spain not long after and Azerbaijan and Canada after that.

Formula 1 is a global sport and so naturally crisscrosses all over the world. But from a logical common-sense perspective, it’s absurd to go about it in a current way. At the time of writing, we’ve just had the Miami Grand Prix. The race before that was Imola and the next one is in Spain.

It’s a lot of moving around that from a logical point of view, doesn’t make a lot of sense – especially these days.

Formula 1 has committed itself to reducing its carbon footprint dramatically by 2030 – as it should. Yet whilst the methods F1 is employing to do this are good steps in the right direction, there’s another obvious solution that they don’t seem to be implementing: travel from race to race.

Instead of flying left, right and centre for the entire year, Formula 1 should move across the globe in a steady, logical way, “Around the World in 80 Days style.” Say the season starts as it normally does in Australia, it makes sense for the next race to take place in Singapore as it’s closest to Melbourne.

From there, they should go to Japan before touching down in the Middle East for the rounds in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia respectively. By moving steadily across the continents, the carbon footprint is surely going to be reduced somewhat as a result.

The shake-up to the calendar could also contribute to some more exciting races as F1 may end up at a certain track at a different time of year to usual and have to deal with the different weather conditions accordingly.

So, it’s a win-win scenario. By flying back and forth all of the time, it seems like an unnecessary waste of air miles. At the end of the day, you can still get in all 22 rounds of the season currently on the calendar and help F1 reach their climate goals by 2030. Plus, this way, Formula 1 really seems like a travelling circus – to me it would anyway.

Image: F1

Shaking up the calendar could provide a new dimension to the Championship that we’ve not seen as fans for quite a long time. Team personnel wouldn’t get as exhausted because theoretically, there would be less travel from one place to another.

Alternatively, F1 could expand the team’s budgets a bit to employ more people so that upon arriving in one country, some fresh personnel are ready and waiting to get stuck in while the others fly home and then re-join the team at a later date at the venue that is closest to them.

This would also go in Domenicali’s favour from earlier if he wants to keep adding races but not at the cost of exhausted staff members.

I’m also not the first person to have this idea (you’re surprised I can tell) as Four-Time World Champion and current Aston Martin driver Sebastian Vettel has echoed similar sentiments to me in the past.

Now I don’t know about you, but he seems to have his head screwed on right these days so I’d say he’s a good supporter to have in my corner for this.

In case anyone is curious to see what the full revised calendar would look like, it would look roughly like this: Australia, Japan, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Baku, Hungary, Monza, Imola, Austria, Spa, Zandvoort, Silverstone, France, Monaco, Spain, Canada, Miami, Austin, Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi. Alternatively, the reverse of this calendar could also work and be quite a fun way of doing things.

What do you reckon? Am I onto something or should Vettel and I go back to the drawing board and come up with a different idea?

Author: Thiemo Albers-Daly