Williams says it is wary of the human cost of Formula 1’s continuing push to expand its calendar, amid suggestions there could be 25 events within the next few years.
Formula 1 chiefs have been keen to add new grands prix to the schedule and next season’s roster will feature 22 events, with Vietnam joining and the Netherlands returning after a 35-year absence.
Under the revised 2021 Sporting Regulations a championship can consist of up to 25 rounds.
Liberty Media is attempting to bring Formula 1 to Miami from May 2021, while it has also held discussions over a second round in China, with Saudi Arabia also mooted as a potential destination.
As part of a compromise the weekend structure is set to be re-formatted in order to condense the current four-day timetable into three days from 2021, while in-season testing has been scrapped.
“25 is a lot of races,” said deputy team boss Claire Williams.
“Looking at 22 for next year is an awful lot and all the teams are having to look at the impact of that on personnel, just purely from a lifestyle perspective and having that work-life balance, it’s incredibly difficult.
“We’ve all got support personnel that we can rotate in and out.
“I think obviously for the bigger teams it might be an easier challenge from that perspective: they have a bigger budget in order to bring in more people in order to support that rotation. It is difficult.
“From a financial perspective though there is an offset, so obviously we go to more races, there is more money in the pot that then gets distributed. So really from an offset financial piece, it’s not the end of the world.
“It’s more managing people, the people we have working for us and not putting too much pressure on them for 25 weekends a year.”
Formula 1’s proposed restructured weekend schedule post-2021 has been designed in order to reduce the workload on personnel, but McLaren boss Andreas Seidl is unsure whether if will have the desired impact.
“It is still something we have to figure out in detail, the effect to the race team,” he said.
“It will definitely have a benefit for some of the race team but we are all aware that the most affected people from this heavy calendar are our mechanics.
“We have a discussion ongoing between the teams and F1 as well to have even further changes, but still, early days, at the moment what we can see doesn’t really affect the schedule of the mechanics.”
