Red Bull's Christian Horner feels 'it makes sense to group some of the races together' on the 2023 F1 calendar
F1 recently announced that a more region-based calendar was in the works for the 2023 F1 season, where races from a particular region were grouped to reduce travel costs. Red Bull boss Christian Horner has now given his approval to the idea.
#F1 plans to tweak the 2023 calendar by grouping more races by region together, in an effort to improve sustainability 🗺️
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Horner felt that clubbing some of these races makes perfect sense in the global climate. Claiming that the current calendar does not make much sense geographically, the Briton said:
“If you look at the calendar it makes sense to group some of the races together, whether it is some of the American races, some of the Asian races and Europe, obviously. Some of the calendar this year when you look at the geographics of it, Azerbaijan to Montreal doesn’t [make sense]. Going to Australia for a weekend is about as expensive as you could make it. Stefano is sympathetic to it but, of course, he has got many challenges with the different promotors to get a calendar that he wants.”
Haas F1 boss also in favor of new F1 calendar proposal
The 2022 #F1 calendar is here! 🙌
A record-breaking 23 races 🏅
A brand new grand prix in Miami 💜
Australia, Canada, Singapore and Japan all return 👌 https://t.co/khq5lAF1IR
Guenther Steiner also feels that the new calendar is a positive step despite its challenges. The Haas team principal highlighted a lack of flexibility when it comes to moving Canada's position on the calendar as it gets too cold to race in and loses its viability at any time other than the current sweet spot.
He said:
“As always there’s a lot of people involved, and there’s a lot of work to be done to make everybody happy. But in the end, I think for sustainability it’s a fantastic thing. And then if we achieve that, a lot of things go with it, positive ones. There are no negatives to it. It’s just a difficult thing to achieve. You have how much time you’ve got that you’re not in the heat, and things like this to think about. Canada you have to worry about the cold, so you cannot take it too early. But it’s good that they work on it, and hopefully in the future we at least can make some steps.”
While some races could undoubtedly lose viability if moved from their particular spot, the step to make the calendar more region-specific is a welcome one considering the long-term future of the sport.