Driven To The Limit: The Human Cost Of F1's Expanding Calendar

Forbes

01-05-2025

The 2023 Ferrari team personnel at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Twenty-four grand prix. Twenty-four cities. Ten months. One relentless race. Behind Formula 1's glitz and glamour, an unseen army works in overdrive–pit crews dismantling garages, engineers poring over data, logistics teams orchestrating the next cross-continental move. For the mechanics, engineers, and staff keeping the sport running, exhaustion isn't just a byproduct of the job–it is the job.
Formula 1 has never been bigger. In the past five years, attendance and engagement have soared, driven by Liberty Media's takeover in 2017 and the Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive, with revenue increasing from $1.83bn in 2017 to $3.65bn in 2024.
The sport, once resistant to change under the Ecclestone era, has cracked open its door to a broader, younger audience. Dr. Samuel Tickell, a sport and media researcher at the University of Muenster in Germany, said, 'We've entered a new area of ownership. We've gone from traditional sport ownership that we've had for so long to now a new American multinational media company that owns it, that has a different take on the economic sustainability of the sport.'
New venues, particularly in the United States and the Middle East, have secured spots on the calendar, with venues like Saudi Arabia paying astronomical fees close to $55 million to taste a morsel of F1' s commercial boom. This price of this growth is paid by those running the circus.
In 2017, the calendar had 20 races. In 2025, it has 24. Liberty Media has made it clear that the expansion isn't over. This isn't just exclusive to Liberty Media, the teams themselves have incentives to race more weekends. Sports lawyer, John Hand, has worked at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team as a senior legal counsel, negotiating contracts and handling key legal matters. 'More likely than not, the teams will vote for more because it makes more money at the end of the day,' said Hand.
While fans celebrate more racing, those behind the scenes endure longer hours, constant travel, and an unrelenting workload. Twelve-hour days are standard. Back-to-backs are brutal. Some employees say the work is 'never- ending.' Whilst some may strike it down purely to the nature of the traveling circus, the exodus of employees rings alarms that it simply cannot be oversimplified to 'nature."
The 2025 calendar features two triple-headers and seven double-headers. A double-header means two race weekends in a row, while a triple-header extends that stretch to three consecutive events. For the ten teams, this means constant travel and limited recovery time.
Javier Bermejo—Former Performance Engineer at Red Bull Racing
Javier Bermejo is a Spanish performance engineer at Sauber F1 team. Bermejo previously spent nearly two years at Red Bull Racing, working on suspension design, optimization, and trackside race support. 'There is so much decision-making that needs to be done fast, people on the track, relying on information sent from the factory, and people on the track that need to operate the car real time, ' said Bermejo.
After the chequered flag, it's straight back to the factory for analysis and prep for the next race—rarely any downtime. A mandated break of 14 consecutive days, as described in Article 21.8 of the FIA sporting regulations, in July and/or August offers a brief respite where no work can be done on design or development, but the calendar itself offers little room for recovery or meaningful change between races.
Massimo Bigi, a junior aerodynamicist at Haas, knows this well. He's spent the past two years with the team, working out of Maranello, just a short drive from where he grew up falling in love with racing. 'To have the races so close together sometimes puts you in the condition where the result that the people are expecting you to give, you cannot provide them with because you cannot even have the data that you need to work on time,' said Bigi.
Massimo Bigi–Junior Aerodynamicist at Haas Formula 1 Team
He explained that the pace of the calendar is taking a toll on development and is slowing the whole process down.
F1 has increasingly become a revolving door, with fresh talent filling the gaps left by those who burn out or move on. With the sport's surging popularity, there's no shortage of newcomers eager to get a foot in the door. 'The recruitment processes have become extremely more selective, and it has, of course, grabbed the attention of many, many F1 fans that now want to work to make it to the F1 teams,' said Bermejo. However, passion for the sport is finite, and it can't keep up with the demands of the job.
Pacing yourself is key to survival in F1' s relentless schedule, and disconnecting is no easy feat. 'You need to be able to know where to put your breaks strategically,' said Bermejo. 'But even if you do, it's still a challenge, working at this pace for so many days, even if you take one or two days off…it's hard to disconnect knowing there's so much pressure,' added Bermejo.
So why do they stay? 'Prestige. It's just the idea of being in what is the pinnacle of motorsport. It's as simple as that,' said Hand. Like any elite competition, Formula 1 runs on the passion of the people behind it. There's a deep pride in being part of a team that builds a car capable of scoring points or even winning, a sense of purpose that makes the long hours and relentless schedule feel worth it. 'If you are not passionate about it, you cannot endure this kind of stress on your shoulders every day,' said Bigi. Yet, Bermejo points out that even passion has 'to crash at some point.'
Although revered for their expertise, they are often trapped in this paradox. The prestige of being part of F1 comes at the cost of personal sacrifices: family time lost, relationships strained, and health pushed to the brink. The real price of this elite job is measured not in paychecks but in the toll it takes on one's life off the track.
When burnout reaches a breaking point, many employees step through F1' s revolving door, this time on their way out. Some transition to similar, high-level motorsports championships. For some, the World Endurance Championship (WEC) offers a more balanced alternative. 'If you can earn more in the World Endurance Championship and only do eight to 10 races a year, then you do it,' said Hand.
World Endurance Championship
There's also growing investment flowing into those forms of the sport. 'F1 pulls everything else with it the same way the Premier League pulls the Championship and League One etc. with it. Same thing happens in motorsport: as F1 gets bigger, WEC gets bigger because it just increases the number of people watching any form of motorsport on a given weekend,' added Hand.
The travel, the hours, and the sheer physical and mental toll raise the question of whether employees are fairly compensated for the demands of the job.
Salaries in F1 might seem competitive at first glance, but compared to other high-performance industries, they often fall short. While drivers earn anywhere from $500,000 to $65 million a year, some even more, thanks to bonuses, sponsorships, and driver value—the same can 't be said for the engineers, mechanics, and factory staff powering the operation.
Take chief engineers or technical directors, for example. According to motorsport job website Fluid jobs, the top personnel might earn around $175,000 a year—decent, sure. Race engineers, who sit on the pit wall making split-second decisions, might start at £40,000. Mechanics? Some make as little as £23,000. In a sport that prides itself on being at the cutting edge, these figures raise questions about the disparity.
Sure, they are not athletes but they are specialists–often with degrees in engineering, physics, or aerodynamics–working under extreme time pressure, tight margins, and constant traveling.
Even championship-winning F1 car designer Adrian Newey told German automobile magazine, Auto Motor und Sport that the cost cap had inadvertently made Formula 1 'no longer the best-paid industry.'
'Now we're losing people to tech companies because they pay better. We ' re losing people to WEC teams because they pay better,' said Newey. 'We're struggling to get graduates because Formula 1 can 't afford to be the best-paying industry anymore, so it has a lot of, let's say, unexpected penalties to it,' added Newey.
Bigi compared the demands of F1 to roles in companies like Airbus or Boeing—intense hours, and high commitment. 'It's definitely not a well-paid job as it was before,' he said. 'My type of contract is such that basically when you sign it you accept that your salary will be higher than like standard average job of that level but you accept that the extraordinaries will not be paid.'
Hand noted that it' s likely all of them have chosen to opt out of the legislation limiting working hours, a decision that, while optional, is commonly made by most people.
In 2023, F1 introduced a curfew to limit working hours during race weekends, restricting when personnel could enter the paddock. But in a sport built on competition, the line between regulation and reality can blur. Teams are granted a limited number of 'curfew breaches' per season, and many are happy to burn through them if the reward justifies the risk. At the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix, both Mercedes and Alpine broke curfew to finish late-night work on their cars. It's not always about ignoring rules. It's a competition. If there's performance to be gained, teams will push.
Technical Delegate's Report: 2025 Japanese Grand Prix Credit: FIA
Technical Delegate's Report: 2025 Japanese Grand Prix Credit: FIA
Back at base, factory staff fall under EU and British labor laws, which mandate rest days, paid leave, and maximum weekly hours—at least on paper. Yet in reality, race prep, last-minute part manufacturing, or overnight wind tunnel testing often pushes staff to the edge of those legal boundaries. 'With a limited working time at a race, this is still an exhausting prospect,' said Tickell.
Despite the strain, there's currently no union for F1 personnel and it costs a fortune to bring a legal case. In a sport that rewards those who go the extra mile, collective protections are still playing catch-up.
Possible solutions have been floated around the paddock but that' s where they stay–ideas, discussions, and nothing more. Promises of change fade as quickly as they appear, leaving the same cycle to continue.
Two main solutions have emerged in conversations: reducing the calendar or rotating staff. However, both come with complications, fewer races mean less revenue, and rotation risks disrupting team cohesion.
One of the biggest obstacles to rotation is F1' s cost cap. Introduced in 2021, the first-ever set of financial regulations outlined a new cost cap aimed at trying to equalize the playing field. It established a limit on how much an F1 team may spend in a calendar year. It relates a team's spending to the performance of the car. In 2025, each team has a budget cap of $135 million, and this includes salaries too.
It's not just the salary that adds up when hiring more staff to cope with the calendar ' s demands. There ' s a ripple effect: benefits, tax, and the administrative burden of managing a growing workforce. Expanding headcount means expanding HR, finance, and legal teams, too. The cost isn 't linear, and that complexity can become a major limiting factor. What seems like a simple solution—just hire more people—is anything but.
Moreover, introducing flexibility around employee compensation, like exempting salaries from the cost cap, could tip the competitive balance. 'One team will start siloing all of the best employees…and that will just drive everybody to join this other place,' said Hand. These 'loopholes ' would just allow wealthier teams to dominate the talent pool.
Under the cap, every dollar spent on personnel is a dollar not spent on performance. For front-running teams, that trade-off is hard to justify.
Instead, the burden falls on those already in the system–pushed to their limits, with no real solution in sight. 'Now, because you have that limit, you are forcing people to work harder, probably for less money, and with tighter deadlines, because the work needs to be done anyway,' said Bermejo. 'You are competing with tier-one teams that are giving it all, so you need to be there in the fight.'
'I don't see how this rotation could work…it will make more sense to reduce the number of races…if fans are asking for more and the organization is pushing for more then it gives you only one answer, which is to implement the rotation, ' he added.
Evana El Haddad is a long-time F1 fan from Lebanon. El Haddad feels that the calendar is saturated. 'I do enjoy the fact that there are more races, but it does get extremely overwhelming because it' s like you just don't know where to focus anymore, ' she said.
Having surveyed 135 F1 fans from around the world, the data shows that most people are open to change, especially if it helps reduce the pressure on teams. Around 54% support a rotating calendar where select races alternate each year, and almost half believe 24 races is already too many. While a few enjoy the intensity of back-to- back weekends, many admit it' s hard to keep up or say their interest depends on how the schedule flows. Many admitted resorting to watching highlights, unable to keep up with the volume. Some questioned whether the number of races would affect the quality of the sport.
Whether it's through a rotating system with wildcard slots—preserving iconic circuits while keeping the calendar fresh—or by grouping races regionally to make the sport more sustainable, change feels not just possible, but necessary.
El Haddad also pointed to the toll on those behind the scenes. 'I can't imagine how the mechanics, engineers, or the staff behind everything—not just the drivers—are feeling. They're working overtime, ' she said. To her, the essence of the sport is getting lost. 'They're putting in more of the flashy glamour and more venues. We really don 't need that many.' added El Haddad.
F1 has always been about innovation, pushing the limits on track, in technology and competition. As the calendar grows, so does the expectation for teams to adapt beyond just performance. 'It' s driving more value from a smaller asset set like keeping it at 23 or 24 [races]...and then instead looking for value around the edges of the ' sport, said Hand.
Tickell expressed that with Liberty's approach to profiting from the sport, there's an expectation to innovate, particularly in human resources, to ensure a sustainable workforce as the race calendar grows and wealth expands.
The expense of this expansion falls considerably on the employees working together– the glue of the sport– without whom it would fall apart. While F1 prides itself on innovation, it has made grueling schedules the norm rather than seeking sustainable solutions that support its talent in a balanced, thriving environment. The real question is no longer whether F1 can innovate, but whether it will do so before those who keep it running are worn out. 'It's amazing, the level of commitment, passion of people working here, it's like, you don 't find it anywhere else,' said Bermejo. As the demands on both workers and the sport itself continue to grow, the clock is ticking for F1 to strike the right balance. How much longer can the engine keep running before it sputters out?