The news topic of the week so far seems to be the date of the opening round of next year’s season. Organisers of the Australian Grand Prix announced that the race will start on 3 April, pushing the start date back by two weeks from previous years. It is still very early on in the season to be talking about calendar dates for 2016, and many things can happen till it gets finalised. In saying that, it is interesting to explore this scenario. With 3 April the proposed date of first race for 2016, is a later F1 start a good or bad thing.
PROS
Starting the season later will give the teams more time in pre-season to prepare their cars. A longer winter will mean extended time fine tuning any glitches with the car. This may prevent the situation we saw in Melbourne this year, when, due to a couple of the cars not making the out lap, and Manor unable to run in time, only saw 15 cars on the grid. Two weeks after this, in Malaysia, there was a 19 car grid at the start. That two weeks showed the difference on what can be achieved, and with a new team in Haas, joining the grid next year, the prolonged pre-season will come in useful for struggling teams. Another positive is that the season can be condensed better than it has being this year as there seems to be big gaps between races. There is a three week gap between Bahrain and Spain, and only three races in the whole of July and August combined. A more condensed calendar, with the hope of a 20-race season, will give the year a better flow and consistency to it, with the fans happy as they’re not waiting for races for long stretches.
CONS
A negative aspect of a longer start date for next year is the length between the last race of 2015, and the first race of 2016. Abu Dhabi is on 29 November, and if next race is 3 April, then that is a gap of 126 days, or 18 weeks. For the fans that will feel like an extremely long gap, and F1 will have to find a way to keep the interest of the fans alive with such a prolonged absence. Another one is that if the season is condensed down, the teams might not be so happy, as they will have less time and opportunity to develop in-season, This means we might not see any change from the start to the end of the season, where the teams lie in a competitive manner on the grid.
So the proposed start date of 3 April does have its pros and cons, but what is certain is that there a couple of things to properly address. Firstly, the gap between races are too wide to justify any sense. The calendar needs to be properly revised, and looked over to give it a better-rounded and consistent feel. The second is the entertainment factor for F1 fans when the races aren’t on. Not so much in-season, as in off-season. If the season by season breaks are going to get longer, the FIA need to keep the hunger of the fans nourished, or they may starve them away.
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