Former Red Bull insider warns F1 calendar risks "professional burnout"

Former Red Bull mechanic Calum Nicholas has warned that Formula 1 personnel face “genuine professional burnout” amid the extensive calendar.

It was announced during the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend that the Bahrain Grand Prix, which had previously been cancelled in April along with the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix due to the conflict in the Middle East, will be held in Malaysia from 2-4 October. 

Speaking on the Red Bull Talking Bull podcast, Nicholas stressed the importance of balancing commercial growth and the well-being of travelling staff and their families. 

“You’ve got to find a balance,” Nicholas said. “On the one hand, I want to see as many races as we can, but I do say this as somebody who now knows he’s not in the garage putting that work in.

“The thing you have to remember, especially towards the end of the season, is that professional burnout is a real thing. It’s all very well saying, ‘Well, you had time off earlier in the year,’ but there just comes a point where the workload can be too much.

“I always like to remind people that it’s not just those who are travelling away to the races. It’s all the people back home, the families trying to make it work, who make sacrifices for them to be away. As much as I want to see as many races back on the calendar, I do think we need to have a little bit of caution.”

Oscar Piastri, McLaren, Isack Hadjar, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Dom Gibbons / Formula 1 via Getty Images

F1 teams have adopted rotational systems with the expansion of the calendar to 24 races. The Milton Keynes outfit introduced an initiative in 2025 allowing mechanics to choose a set number of races to skip.

“So teams have their own initiatives,” Nicholas continued. “For us here at Red Bull, we started giving mechanics the opportunity to take a few races off a year in 2025. They have the ability to plan that and choose their races so that they can make it work with family and kids and all of that stuff.

“It’s important that teams continue to do that. For Formula 1 and the way that we look at how we schedule races, it’s just the planning of the travel and trying to make it as efficient as possible without jumping back and forth across the globe. That really helps people. 

“For example, the Austria, Britain and Belgium triple-header is one of the better ones because you’re not going far, right? The flights are really short and that helps. When we did Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, that takes a far greater toll.

“It’s a long way across the globe, and there’s the jet lag and all of those things. So it’s important to look at the calendar when we know we’re going to have this many races, planning as best we can to try to ease as much of that stress off the people as we can. I think that’s important.”

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– The Motorsport.com Team