Formula 1’s stacked 2020 schedule can’t become the norm, Haas boss Guenther Steiner has warned.
In the wake of Covid-19, which saw the first 10 races either cancelled or postponed, F1 has been on a push to catch-up with nine events in just 11 weeks consisting of three triple-headers starting in Austria in July and ending last weekend at Mugello.
With the sport’s normal calendar also ever-expanding, with 22 the initial number planned in 2020 before Covid-19, some do fear F1 could use tripleheaders more willingly after this year.
But Steiner explained why that shouldn’t be the case.
“Thinking back several months ago when we came back from Australia – nobody knew if we’d even go racing again this year,” he said.
“There’s been a great job done by everybody to get this amount of races (17) in, but it’s pretty tiring to have tripleheaders.
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“Managers and some of the staff can go home between races and at least it gives them a little bit of time off to see family, but the hardest working guys like the mechanics and engineers, they’re staying at the races to get the garage and cars ready again for the next race. It is pretty tough.
“Going forward like this is not sustainable in my opinion,” he insisted. “We can do it this year as we have the energy harvested from having the three months off, or at least not doing a lot because we were under the FIA shutdown.
“On a normal calendar you couldn’t do this, it would just wear people out. Nobody would want to work like this.”
The final eight races are a little more spaced out and will see four new events, including returns to Nurburgring, Imola and Istanbul.
“I think the rest of the season, with the exception of the final triple-header in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, it is at least more normal than the last two months,” Steiner added.
“I think everybody’s looking forward to it and when we reach that final triple-header, everybody will put their last bit of energy into it to finish up.”