Calum Nicholas, former Red Bull Racing mechanic, believes that the extension of the Formula 1 calendar represents a real danger for team personnel who are under severe strain.
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After thirteen seasons spent in the Austrian team’s garage, Calum Nicholas is now a Red Bull ambassador. A new life away from the circuits, but still at the pace of Formula 1 for someone who was one of Max Verstappen’s mechanics.
Guest on the Talking Bull podcast, he warned about the risks of professional burnout and called for better protection of employees and their families.
Beware of burnout
While Nicholas welcomes the growing popularity of the sport, he believes it should not come at the expense of the men and women working behind the scenes: “We need to find a balance. On one hand, I want to see as many Grands Prix as possible, but I say this today knowing that I am no longer in the garage doing that work. Burnout is a reality.”
The former mechanic reminds that accumulated fatigue becomes particularly significant as the season progresses: “We must remember that, especially towards the end of the season, professional burnout is a reality. You can always say that teams had free time earlier in the year, but there comes a point when the workload simply becomes too much.”
According to him, the impact of the calendar does not only concern the team members traveling from Grand Prix to Grand Prix: “I like to remind people that it’s not just those who travel to the circuits. There are also all those who stay at home, the families who have to organize and make sacrifices during their absence. Even though I would like to see even more races on the calendar, I think we need to be a bit cautious.”
Red Bull has implemented a mechanic rotation system
Faced with the increase in the number of events, teams have started to adapt their organization. Nicholas explains that Red Bull introduced, from 2025, a rotation system allowing mechanics to voluntarily miss several Grands Prix during the season.
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“At Red Bull, we started offering mechanics the possibility to skip a few races each year, he reveals. They can plan and choose the Grands Prix that suit them best in order to better balance their work with their family life and children.”
Beyond rotations, Nicholas believes that Formula 1 can also reduce staff fatigue by building a more logistically coherent calendar: “We especially need to better plan travel and try to make trips as efficient as possible, without constantly having to cross the planet back and forth. That helps people a lot.”
A better-organized calendar to limit fatigue
He notably cites the example of the triple Austria – Great Britain – Belgium sequence, which he considers one of the most reasonable runs of the season: “The distances are short and the flights are quick, which makes things much easier.”
Conversely, some end-of-season sequences are much more exhausting: “When we had Las Vegas, Qatar, then Abu Dhabi back-to-back, the fatigue was much greater.”
As the Formula 1 calendar continues to expand, Calum Nicholas therefore believes the sport will need to find a balance between its commercial development and the well-being of the thousands of people who contribute every weekend to the operation of the teams.
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