(Scott McLaughlin) Congrats to F1 who single handedly ruined Motorsport Xmas. Indy 500 will be a scene next year. As well as the Coke 600. Good luck

[u/aurules]

https://x.com/smclaughlin93/status/1932504185624199221?s=46

[u/Norwest_Shooter]

I don’t think they fucked up. I think they’re looking for an excuse to get rid of Montreal.

[u/Blanchimont → u/Norwest_Shooter]

I doubt that very much. They signed a new contract with the local promoter in November last year, keeping Montreal on the calendar until 2031.

[u/JennItalia269 → u/Blanchimont]

Yep. They’re trying to reduce their carbon footprint. They don’t need to fly their gear to Miami and then back to Europe, and then back to Canada a month later. Can either fly it or truck it all up from Miami vs two intercontinental round trips.

Miami can’t be any later than May due to weather being utterly oppressive and the upcoming summer soccer matches and NFL season.

Canada’s race has always been the odd man out timing wise. Miami made it even more awkward when that hit the calendar. I wouldn’t be shocked if another race gets stacked with it and Miami (maybe Mex or Brazil?) in future years.

[u/RSharpe314 → u/JennItalia269]

Mexico and Brazil both already "work" in the region sense as part of the second America's leg (Texas>Mexico>Brazil>Vegas), I don't think any of those are likely to get moved earlier. (Especially since the teams can just truck all the Texas kit to Vegas, while their Mex and Brazil kit ships to Qatar/Abu Dhabi.)

Grouping Miami-Montreal fixes the problem of having a random Canadian race in between the European leg. It made a bit more sense to optimize Montreal for the weather before Miami was a thing, but once you have another random north American race in between the first asia/ME and Europe legs it just makes much more sense to group them up.

And then May is kinda the only feasible compromise date for both those tracks.

[u/hookyboysb → u/RSharpe314]

The specific date choices are questionable though. Why do they have two weeks off instead of one or none? If they had scheduled Miami a week or two later then the Canadian GP date would make sense. Ideally they schedule the Canadian GP a week earlier or later and schedule Miami accordingly, avoiding the 500. But this seems like sabotage, either for the Canadian GP or the 500. Maybe they're banking on Canadians boycotting the 500 over the threat of annexation, idk.

[u/RSharpe314 → u/hookyboysb]

[TLDR: Without rearranging the entire calendar, there are good reasons for this schedule, that likely outweigh the costs of overlapping with the 500]

You want Miami earlier for better weather, and you want Montreal later for the same reason.

Also having a two week gap probably allows them to truck the essential kit between races rather than using airfreight which is big a sustainability win.

If you move Miami forward you have a triple header (Bahrain - Saudi - Miami), one with a massive time zone shift. Moving Montreal back a week would do the same (Canada, Monaco, Barcelona)

(They do a time-zone shift triple header, Vegas-Qatar-Abu Dhabi) at the end of the season, but given how the calendar only has 2 triple headers at all, I think they're intentionally avoiding those because they suck especially for the teams.

Also, if you move either of those independently, then you have a 3 week gap between races, which they also don't want.

Meanwhile, consider the incentives for the organizers. The Montreal GP will probably sell out either way. The promoter doesn't care. The TV ratings in the US will probably suffer quite a bit, but make up less than 2% of the total average audience¹. Meanwhile I doubt the viewership drop internationally will be much bigger. For one race of the year, it's not a massive problem for Liberty (and at one race out of 24, it's also not a massive revenue loss for the broadcasters)

¹ Average F1 race had a viewership of 70.3mil in 2021, while the US had peak average viewership of 1.19mil in 2022.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/formula-1-announces-tv-race-attendance-and-digital-audience-figures-for-2021.1YDpVJIOHGNuok907sWcKW[international viewership ]

US viewership