BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Just like IndyCar and NASCAR, Formula One has come up with an unconventional schedule in order to run as many races as possible this season.
Furthermore, F-1 has visited and will go to venues that were not on the original 22-race calendar. The Tuscan Grand Prix on the challenging Mugello Circuit, for example, was an exciting and incident-packed race.
And now everybody is looking forward to F-1’s upcoming “Roval” race in Bahrain.
The Bahrain Grand Prix will be held on the traditional 15-turn, 3.363-mile track on Nov. 29. The Sakhir Grand Prix will be run at the same venue but on the 2.201-mile outer circuit on Dec. 6. It is slightly longer than Monaco, which is the shortest track on the calendar at 2.074 miles.
While the track has 11 turns, it looks somewhat like a squared-off oval layout.
“It’s a very nice thing if you’re staying two times in the same place to have a different circuit layout,” said Haas team principal Guenther Steiner. “The more important thing is how (F-1’s commercial owners) Liberty dealt with this, to find locations and to dig deep to find the places to go, which are new, which make it interesting for the rest of the season.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner noted: “I think that Formula One has done a fantastic job to try and get so many races on the calendar and to allow the teams to be able to race in the same location twice, obviously, helps with a load of logistical issues that we’re facing at the moment with all these tripleheaders. But from what I hear, this new track layout is going to be incredibly fast, which is going to make it interesting.”
Lap times will be under a minute.
“With 55 seconds per lap, it will be a big mess with traffic on the qualifying laps and it will be a nightmare,” said Alfa Romeo boss Fred Vasseur. “But I think it’s exciting to have different layouts of the tracks when we have a double event like this.”
The No. 3 on Daniel Ricciardo’s race car is in honor of Dale Earnhardt.
“I grew up a NASCAR fan, so I’m pretty excited,” Ricciardo said when asked about the track. “It is probably the closest thing we will get to running an oval unless we head back to Indianapolis or something.”
Austria and Britain also hosted two races this year but on exactly the same track layout at the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone Circuit.
“I think it is cool that they are changing it up,” Ricciardo said. “To go to the same track two weekends in a row can sometimes be a little bit monotonous. So I’m pretty happy that they have changed it up. Whether it is a better track or not, we will soon find out. But I think it is a good decision.”
Michael Masi, the FIA’s race director, has had many discussions with the Bahrain organizers as he investigated all of the available alternative track layouts.
“They offer multiple layouts, all of which have a Grade 1 rating,” Masi said. “It’ll provide a different number of challenges for us being a short lap time. But from an FIA perspective and on a personal and professional basis, I’m looking forward to it. It’ll provide a challenge for the teams.”
The race will be 87 laps so the F-1 required race distance of 190 miles can be achieved.
When it finally got underway, the season started with nine races in seven countries in 11 weeks. There were three tripleheaders. The teams understand and accept that for 2020, but they do not want tripleheader race weekends to become normal in the future.
“I think multiple tripleheaders are not sustainable,” Racing Point CEO Otmar Szafnauer said. “We’re doing them this year, but if I were to tell all the mechanics that this is how it’s going to be, going forward, I think they would choose to do something else.”
While the drivers and senior team people were able to go home for a few days during the tripleheaders, the mechanics were away from their families for many weeks.
“I think the biggest issue is being away from the families and the kids and so on, for each team member,” said McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl.