Next year, for the first time since 1984, the United States will host two world championship Formula One grand prix races as Miami joins Austin on a record 23-race calendar.
In 1984, Dallas held what would turn out to be a one-off street race while Detroit also hosted a street race. Ever since Liberty Media took over as F1’s commercial owners in 2017 it wanted to add a second race in the U.S. at a destination city, and it has finally achieved its goal with a 10-year deal with Miami.
The 23 races will be crammed in between the season opener in Bahrain on March 20 and the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on November 20. Formula 1 is anxious to avoid conflicts with the World Cup final rounds that starts in Qatar on November 21.
Missing from the mix for the third consecutive year is China due to the COVID-19 restrictions in that country.
Some F1 team bosses, including Toto Wolff at Mercedes and Gunther Steiner at Haas, are concerned about the taxing schedule. Wolff even proposed that the FIA introduce a rule to mandate that the teams rotate staff.
Others, like Red Bull’s Christian Horner and AlphaTauri’s Franz Tost are not worried.
“Everybody has choices in life,” Horner told the Daily Mail. “You could go to Formula 2 and do 12 races and earn half the money.
“I think a lot of guys in the paddock forget that 10 or 15 years ago, we went testing in January and then the drivers and their race engineers would go from race to test to race to test.
“In terms of work balance, we don’t see the mechanics in the factory much between races because the cars aren’t there. I think it is manageable if we are going to the right venues in the right order around the world.”
But the drivers and senior team personnel can often fly home between races whereas many crew members are away from home and family for weeks at a time.
The provisional 2022 F1 calendar:
March 20: Bahrain; March 27: Saudi Arabia; April 10: Australia; April 24: Imola, Italy; May 8: Miami; May 22: Spain; May 29: Monaco; June 12: Azerbaijan; June 19: Canada; July 3: Britain; July 10: Austria; July 24: France; July 31: Hungary; August 28: Belgium; September 4: Holland; September 11: Italy; September 25: Russia; October 2: Singapore; October 9: Japan; October 23: United States; October 30: Mexico; November 13: Brazil; November 20: Abu Dhabi.