F1
Should we go beyond 24 GPs per season?
© AUTOhebdo from DPPI
Facts : With return of Las Vegas to the F1 calendar from 2023, the discipline finds itself, in theory, with 23 events per year, which would constitute a record in more than 70 years of existence. The legal limit of 24 Grands Prix per year does not seem to be an obstacle for the powers at the head of the F1, who even mentioned an increase to 30 meetings in the medium term. But, should we go beyond 24 GPs per season for the good of the sport?
YES, by Bastien Cheval
The more the better? What if it was true in Formula 1? The last season, in 2021, gave us a mind-boggling spectacle, from March to December, with 22 races (a record) each having drawn its own story and delivered its own dramaturgy until the final bouquet. A long season is therefore not necessarily boring. And the 2022 financial year, with 23 meetings, is off to an equally exciting start.
So, is it a bad idea to break the glass ceiling, established by the Concorde Agreement, of 24 Grands Prix per season? Without exploding the counters and requisitioning F1 personnel for more than half of the weekends of the year, the game could be worth the effort. More Grands Prix means more revenue for Formula 1, so it is in the purely financial interest of the sport and its stakeholders to extend the calendar. Moreover, this reform could be an opportunity for the teams to review their organization, strengthen their staff and, ultimately, allow more mechanics and engineers to achieve their dreams and pass through the big doors of the Circus.
In addition, the current expansion of the calendar is mainly due to F1's desire to open up to new territories ready to pay the price (the United States and the Middle East, to summarize). As a result, the place of historic sporting circuits finds itself threatened. Even the Monaco Grand Prix would find itself in the hot seat, sacrilege! France, too, risks finding itself in the same situation as Germany, which has not hosted a Grand Prix since 2019. Is the bottle no longer big enough to contain all the drunkenness? Let's get a bigger bottle!
And who knows, maybe with a calendar of 25 Grand Prix per season, it might be possible to push back the African continent with, why not, a return to Kyalami? Let's not forget that F1 is a world championship, of the whole world.
NO, by Medhi Casaurang-Vergez
If we tell children not to stuff themselves with candy during birthday parties, there is a reason. Eating sweets is good, but beware of overdosing on small pleasures. A Formula 1 season could soon look like this. A Grand Prix is pleasant to watch, but by spending half of your weekends of the year slumped on your sofa, don't you risk devaluing these moments of well-being?
Even if it means looking like a (young) old fool, there was a time not long ago when each round of the calendar was coated in great anticipation, fueled by the almost invariable two-week delay during which the followers dissected the past event and where the evocation of the upcoming trip gave free rein to scenarios favoring his favorite driver/team. High mass on Sunday was unmissable, precisely because we then had to go through 15 days of weaning.
In 2022, we no longer even have time to read the drivers' post-race statements as Twitter accounts go crazy at 8 a.m. on Monday morning belching “RACE WEEK”! Wait, haven't we just finished a week of racing, have we? It's becoming increasingly difficult to savor each race from the spectator's vantage point. How not to confuse one of the 22 Grands Prix in your memories, especially with increasingly similar tracks imagined by the Tilke office?
Certainly, perhaps my thrifty and slow nature in this ever-faster world does not adapt to Liberty Media's strategy, and that my wish to return to a 16-appointment schedule like in the 1990s and early 2000s is just a residue of nostalgia.
What if we imagined ourselves in the place of a stable employee? I'm not talking about the pilots, who lead a dream life, but the men and women behind the scenes, the mechanics, and those who ensure logistics in the four corners of the world. Between the winter tests in February/March and the final in December, they can now hardly rest. Even the traditional August break was almost forgotten in order to record more races!
F1 takes advantage of our sometimes unreasonable love for this sport to flirt with the limit of reasonableness.
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05/04/2022 at 09:32 a.m.
The king dollar risks killing Formula 1 beyond any consideration of carbon footprint! Niki Lauda
05/04/2022 at 09:33 a.m.
had stated that Formula 1 will no longer exist within a few decades!
Jacques Morin
05/04/2022 at 05:38 a.m.
In short, vote Medhi!!
Jacques Morin
05/04/2022 at 05:36 a.m.
Formula 1 is the pinnacle of motorsport on the circuit. She is Demand personified. Apart from this requirement, in all areas, do not accommodate quantity. By nature the top is unique or rare. So yes, there are already too many Grand Prix for a single Grand Prix to be exceptional. 24 races are already sold out, so any more means liquidation. It is better to see ONE Pink Floyd concert (this is an example) than twenty Pascal Obispo concerts (this is another example). One weekend out of three in the year on average is the maximum: 17 meetings which remain unmissable. Otherwise, how can you convince your partner that it's not possible to go to your mother's house that Sunday? Obviously, there comes a time when we are no longer credible in exceptional matters. And going everywhere, in countries which should first take care of the social and economic level of their population, it's just a matter of pumping dollars... until exhaustion. We would do better to do alternation... We keep Silverstone, Monaco and Monza each year and the rest revolves around only having them leave three races outside Europe, otherwise the carbon balance speech CANNOT hold... In short, in These troubled times, it is appropriate to return to basics rather than rushing into the fog towards the cliff.
05/04/2022 at 01:12 a.m.
Don't overdo it, as my grandmother used to say! So do not go beyond the 24 races, even if it means rotating between certain circuits while reintegrating countries with a strong automobile culture like South Africa, Argentina, Sweden... instead of chasing petrodollars from time to time stained with blood and/or state violence!