Having 24 Formula 1 races this season to watch the likes of Max Verstappen and Lando Norris go head-to-head may sound amazing, but it’s a nightmare for paddock personnel.
Fernando Alonso joined Verstappen in calling the calendar ‘not sustainable’ earlier in the year, before the opening race of 2024 at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
At that stage in the season, everyone is relatively fresh before a long calendar slowly wears on everyone and leaves them tired before the final event at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Stefano Domenicali admitted the F1 calendar might change, insisting that it would be wrong to call 24 races too many yet.
Adding more races also has an impact on current and historic tracks. Michael Schumacher’s beloved Imola circuit could be dropped as organisers try to work out if they can alternate with another track on the calendar.
Outside of every Grand Prix, teams and drivers have to attend promotional events too which adds to their cramped schedule and reduces the amount of rest they can achieve.
Toto Wolff suffered ‘brutal’ time at Mercedes event during 2024 F1 season
Mercedes were one of the teams to endure a long and tricky 2024 campaign at times, with one of the most unpredictable cars on the grid.
Sometimes they turned up with a race-winning car and sometimes they were in the midfield, but both drivers still managed to deliver multiple victories.
It wasn’t the fairytale ending for Lewis Hamilton at the Silver Arrows and his final race included team boss Toto Wolff angrily yelling at a Mercedes chief after a Q1 exit.
READ MORE: Guenther Steiner doesn’t believe promise Toto Wolff made to Lewis Hamilton before his move to Ferrari
But he can be forgiven at the end of a long season, where he recalled to ORF that he had to fly seven hours and back just for an event in Hawaii.
“I had an appointment, a sponsor event in Hawaii,” said Wolff. “I was there for exactly 18 hours. I flew over there for seven hours from Austin, then 18 hours there, and then back again.
“Hawaii sounds great, but if you’re not at the beach, but in a hotel and going to an event, it’s not so fun. That was brutal.”
How will the F1 calendar change in 2025?
In 2025, Formula 1 returns to an old habit for the first time in six years as it heads to Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix to be the season-opener.
It will mark the start of McLaren’s Constructors’ Championship defence and Verstappen’s bid to win a fifth consecutive Drivers’ title.
The season won’t end with two triple headers next year, but there will still be six races in the final eight weeks of the calendar.
READ MORE: Four F1 races including one of Max Verstappen’s favourites set to be rotated on the calendar from 2026
It will be the penultimate Dutch Grand Prix after they signed a one-year extension through 2026, following a decision to no longer host a race after that.
It does free some much-needed space on the calendar, but it will probably be filled quite quickly considering the high levels of interest in the sport.
