Carey denies targeting 25-race F1 calendar

Chase Carey has denied that Liberty Media is targeting 25 race calendars for the future. When Liberty took over the sport at the start of the year, it was suggested they wanted to grow the sport and add more races to the calendar.

Many team personnel disagreed with the rumours, as they put forward that it would simply be too much for the mechanics and engineers, However, Carey says that 25 races are not a part of Liberty's plan.

"We have never suggested that," he clarified. "We have only discussed the possibility of more races, including an additional race in the US in New York or Miami perhaps. But 25, 23, 22 races is not the reality at the moment and not the point of the discussion," Carey explained.

"At the moment, our attention is on making the 21 races really great events, making more of what we have and putting the fan back in the middle," he added.

Red Bull's Dr Helmut Marko thinks that 25 races could work, but teams would need to be split in two to carry the load of an incredibly long season of racing.

"25 races would be possible," Red Bull's Dr Helmut Marko told the Austrian broadcaster Servus TV. "But then we would be at the point of working with two teams that are replacing one another. For us the number of races is not the point.

"We want to see the driver, not the engineer, at the centre, and this dominance of the engine must end. We want to see things like Verstappen fighting with Hamilton and Vettel, not hearing the engineers tell the drivers how to save fuel or go to another engine mode."

Fergal Walsh