Name: The Insane Logistics of Formula 1
Uploaded: 2021-06-10T11:40:57.000Z
Duration: 9 min 14 s
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This video was made possible by the Crew 2—a new open world racing game from Ubisoft.

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No sport is as logistically challenging as motorsports.

While equipment matters in any sport, in motorsports the human is only half the athlete—the vehicle

The performance of a motorsports vehicle is directly tied to having the right components

in the right place at the right time so the logistics are part of the competition.

Racing may be a sport but it's not all fun and games.

Teams are businesses—businesses that are expected to make money.

The most valuable Formula 1 team—Scuderia Ferrari—is worth over $1.3 billion.

This means this team is valued at about as much as tech companies Discord, Bird Rides,

The wealthier teams, like Ferrari, are able to spend more money on transport to bring

more equipment and spare parts which can make the difference between winning and losing

Formula 1 is by many measures the most international sports competition.

Over its 21 yearly races the teams traverse five continents with as little as a week between

A chaotic ballet of trucks, boats, and planes transports this show across the world each

Ten teams compete in Formula 1 and despite it taking place worldwide it is by all measures

Eight of the ten teams are registered in and operate out of Europe.

Only the Indian and American teams are from elsewhere although, the Indian team is actually

based in the UK while the US team, based in North Carolina, operates a secondary forward

base in the UK so that its staff doesn't have to travel all the way back to the US

between each of the European races which in recent years have been held consecutively,

with the brief interruption of the Canadian Grand Prix, in the middle of the season over

Thanks to this, the European leg of the season is, compared to the rest, relatively easy

logistically because within Europe you can drive.

The cost of shipping by truck is so comparatively low to shipping by plane that teams bring

whole buildings with them to the European races.

These buildings are what are modestly referred to as “motorhomes” but can be as large

as Red Bull's three story structure that includes offices, bars, and a restaurant with

All of that packs into a number of trucks and can be assembled in less than two days.

Along with all the other equipment including cars, spare parts, and electronics, convoys

of dozens of trucks per team criss cross the continent before each European race.

Typically races are held every two weekends on Sunday which gives teams plenty of time

to relocate before activity begins on the Thursday before the Grand Prix but from time

to time the schedule is crunched and races take place two weekends in a row.

This proves a more daunting logistical challenge as teams only have three full days to break

down, transport, and reassemble their equipment at the new race site.

Even worse, for the first time ever the 2018 season saw three weekends with three races

On June 24 the French Grand Prix took place in Le Castellet then the next weekend the

Austrian one was held in Spielberg finishing off the following weekend with the British

The Austria-UK transfer was the most difficult one as it involved driving nearly 1,000 miles

including through the choke-point of the channel tunnel.

For this trek, each truck was manned by three drivers so that while one drove the others

could sleep in an RV that accompanied the convoy.

That way, the trucks could drive continuously only stopping to refuel.

But again, these races are easy logistically compared to the ones outside of Europe—the

Just like with the European races the majority of flyaway races occur with two weeks between

them but from time to time races are scheduled on back to back weekends thousands of miles

These back to back flyaway races are the most logistically difficult weeks of the Formula

On Sunday April 8th, 2018 the Bahrain Grand Prix was held in Sakhir, Bahrain then seven

days later, the following weekend, the Chinese Grand Prix was held in Shanghai, China.

Over 4,000 miles separated those two racetracks and yet, just like with every race, everything

came down on Sunday night in Bahrain and had to be operational by Thursday morning in China.

Even worse, Shanghai is five hours ahead of Bahrain which is effectively five hours fewer

to do the work but in reality, the planning for this transfer began months before.

Around January 2018, three months before the first races of the season, each of the ten

teams packed up five sets of shipping containers.

Each of these sets held their sea kits carrying things like chairs, tables, appliances, cooking

utensils, and some elements of their garages.

They send these bulkier and less expensive pieces of equipment by sea as it's massively

less expensive than sending them by plane.

The number of containers per team varies as the wealthier teams like Red Bull will take

more but in general each team takes about three 40 foot containers.

Of course ocean shipping is slower, but since there are five sets there is always one at

That January shipment sent the first five kits to the first five flyaway races—Melbourne,

Australia; Sakhir, Bahrain; Shanghai, China; Baku, Azerbaijan; and Montreal, Canada.

Then, as each race was completed its kit was packed up and sent to the next flyaway race

destination without a kit—the Australian one went to Singapore, the Bahraini one to

Russia, the Chinese one to Japan, the Azerbaijani one to the United States, and the Canadian

one to Mexico, and then towards the end of the season, when there are no more tracks

to send kits to, they're sent back to the teams' home bases for the winter.

At the racetrack, the Formula 1 logistics team's main downtime is actually during

the race itself but for the Bahrain to China transfer real work began the Thursday before

That's when each team's logistics manager started making their tear-down plan—deciding

in which order and into which containers their different pieces of equipment should go.

Once that was completed there was really not a lot to do until Sunday.

On Sunday morning, before the race even started, the pack up began.

Many of the spare parts can't be used during the race—they're not going to replace

an engine during the Grand Prix—so they're the first pieces of kit to be packed into

Not much happened during the race itself but within 15 minutes of it ending the main pack

The cars, the most important pieces of equipment, were subjected to a post-race inspection to

be sure no illegal modifications were made but everything else was immediately ready

All the equipment that the teams wanted at the destination first were put in one of three

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The Insane Logistics of Formula 1

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