FIA president Jean Todt has suggested Liberty Media should ease off plans to implement a 25-race calendar for Formula 1.
Next year will see teams face a record number of events in one year with 22 Grands Prix planned as Vietnam and Holland join the schedule.
Longer-term, a race in Miami is agreed in principle for 2021, Saudi Arabia has voiced interest and a return to Africa is also being earmarked by F1 bosses.
“I think it will be a long process to approach 25 races,” Todt told Germany’s Motorsport Magazin. “At the moment we should focus on 22 races.”
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To accommodate the extended calendar, all in-season tests have been dropped and pre-season testing will be two days shorter in 2020.
Then, under the new regulations for 2021, plans are afoot to condense the schedule by moving media commitments and scrutineering to Friday.
But none of this is winning over McLaren driver Carlos Sainz.
“Personally I like when Formula 1 goes to a place and it makes a big impact so it becomes a week of having Formula 1 there,” he told Crash.net.
“That extra day that we take off doesn’t fully compensate those 22 or 25 races that we want to have in the future. It still involves too much travelling and too much effort from the mechanics.
“I think this is a way of preparing for a bigger calendar which is something I’m totally against.”