Fears of a
Formula 1 ‘burnout' have been raised by the sport's team bosses, with the recently-released provisional 2009 calendar doing away with the traditional August break.
The schedule features 19 races – one more than this year – with the Turkish Grand Prix on 9 August followed by the new European Grand Prix in Valencia just a fortnight later, whereas in recent campaigns there has been a three-week hiatus in August to allow the drivers, teams and mechanics some respite from the high-pressure nature of the
F1 season.
What's more, the last five outings are all long-haul flyaway ones – with Singapore, Japan, China, Brazil and Abu Dhabi completing the dates – which looks set to guarantee an exhausting end to the campaign, especially with all ten of the top flight's teams being based in Europe [see separate story –
click here].
“I think the absence of the August break in the calendar next year is very tough,”
McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh is quoted as having said by international news agency
Reuters. “It really is tough on the mechanics.
“It worries me how hard it is going to be on the teams, but I think that's a management challenge – how we're going to deal with that and make sure we don't burn people out during the course of the season.”
“The August break was introduced as a means of genuinely giving everyone a rest in the middle of tough seasons,” added
Honda team principal Ross Brawn. “Now we want to expand the number of races and not do that (have the break), so we end up having to look at reserve squads and back-up mechanics and groups of people who can take over so the other guys can get a rest.
“Without doing that, to have a whole race team that can't take a holiday from what would effectively be February until November is not easy. We've been through this before. I think it's a shame.”
