Teams need more staff not cuts for 2021
Despite the upcoming budget cap AlphaTauri boss Franz Tost says teams will need more staff to cope with a 23-race calendar in 2021.
It’s Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari who are expected to struggle the most to bring their budgets down to the $145m-a-year budget cap from 2021, and staff are set to be the let go or redeployed to other areas as part of achieving this.
But it seems that there may be plenty of doors open at the midfield teams who are now expecting to need more workers involved since they face a proposed 23-race calendar for next season.
“You know that the teams are now aware of the plan to hold 23 races and I hope it is possible,” Tost told Motorsport.com.
“I don’t know what impact the COVID story is going to have, but it simply means that we have to build the infrastructure for this number of races.
“What does it mean? We’ll hire extra mechanics, extra engineers so we can have enough people up our sleeve. You never know what might happen, but you want to be on the right side. It’s all about organization.
“It’s a big number, 23 races. But right now, we can hope for that number. It means we have to find a way to manage that, it has to be organized. But that shouldn’t be a problem.”
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Acting Williams principal Simon Roberts said that his team would look to rotate staff around race weekends for next season.
But, he said there are already enough people on the Williams payroll to manage this.
“We’ve been working on this issue for a few months,” he said.
“We have the plan to create a rotation schedule. It’s very tiring to be away from home 22 or 23 weekends a year. That sucks the energy out of a team.
“Fortunately, we have enough people at the factory with experience, in the current situation with the coronavirus we have people on standby anyway. Next year we will rotate everyone during the races.
“No one has to be present at every race, which is actually untenable, except for the drivers.”
Formula 1 hasn’t yet announced whether or not it will adopt a two-day schedule at some of the 23 events next season in order to reduce the workload.
The format was first officially used at the 2020 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix with only one 90-minute practice session before qualifying on Saturday.
It received mixed reviews, though there was a general concern for the financial impacts on Formula 1 and its fans if two-day events became a regular feature.
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