Team bosses warn against more races

Claire Williams and Robert Fernley of Force India believe that Liberty Media runs the risk of "saturating" the market if they add more Grand Prix races to an already packed calendar, along with their proposed budget cap which will need to be further stretched.

The 2018 calendar has 21 races including the first ever-triple header with a Grand Prix in three consecutive weekends, but Liberty Media are looking to add more, with at least one race in the United States tipped to be added.

Claire Williams is against the idea, mainly due to how hard the crew will be worked.

“From a human perspective it’s a tough on our guys who are having to spend such a huge amount of time away from home,” she said.

“Maybe drawing the calendar out, starting earlier and finishing later gives more of a break but it actually then takes away time that we have to build our cars over the winter but also for the guys to spend good quality time at home with their families over the winter.

“From a purely sporting fan perspective, if it’s from a saturated market, then great if we have more races if we can go to more markets, particularly within America, I think that would crucial for our sport, but if we are to do that then it has to make financial sense and those races that come on the calendar have to come on because they are paying to do so.

“I don’t see why teams should be expected to go to new races for nothing, and then the price fund pot dilutes down even further and it’s just costing the teams more and more and that shouldn’t be the case.”

These comments were echoed by Force India's Fernley, who reiterated that the rigours of the schedule could stretch the crews too much.

“You have to look at the human logistics in a lot of this,” said Fernley.

“Twenty races, we’re very much on the edge of being able to maintain it with one crew, one travelling crew in particular.

“So once you start moving in beyond that, occasionally we can go to 21 and then we go back to 19 and we can cope with all of that, but once you get a sustained amount of races that are going well up into the twenties, we’re going to have to bring in revolving crews and there’s a huge cost to that and these are the things we’ve got to look at so there needs to be just a look at how are we going to do it logistically.

“It’s quite capable from a show point of view but it will change how we, as teams, operate.”