'F1 teams won't be able to sustain more races'

After Claire Williams' attack on Liberty Media's lack of clarity regarding their calendar expansion plans, Force India's Bob Fernley added his weight to the argument by suggesting that more races may mean that teams need more than one pit crew to cover the season.

Williams was hugely critical of Liberty's ongoing discussions to expand the calendar, with Denmark, Vietnam and Miami currently on the shortlist, saying that the finances have to work for the teams or else they should reject the proposals.

She added that, from a human perspective, teams and drivers need time off to be with their families, and that placing more dates that eat into the winter break could hurt the development of the cars.

Fernley was in broad agreement with Williams; both teams have suffered their fair share of financial woes over the last few seasons, and he feels that his is already 'on the edge' of what they can cover with a single crew, and that, eventually, rotating crews may eventually be necessary to meet the additional demand.

He said: "20 races, we’re very much on the edge of being able to maintain it with one crew, one travelling crew in particular.

"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.There’s a huge cost to that, and these are the things we’ve got to look at.

"There needs to be just a look at how are we going to do it logistically."

Under LIberty's sweeping 2021 proposals which are still being worked on, there is a bill which suggests that each team should incur a $150m cost cap per season on spending, which would make the concept of rotating crews 'impossible' to fund effectviely, according to Fernley.