After decades in which former Formula 1 president Bernie Ecclestone settled in the paddock with a discreet motorhome, the current owners of the category, Liberty Media , have opted for something very different from the naked eye.
As teams prepare for the first pre-season tests to take place this week in Barcelona , F1’s new double-decker motorhome has been one of the paddock’s first surprises, with a size comparable to large megastructures for which the teams are most famous.
It is likely that the highest category of motorsport will use its new motorhome to promote the well-being of its staff, hold meetings and take special guests to races in Europe.
After two years in which the paddock was mostly empty due to COVID-19 restrictions, F1 hopes that in the 2022 season things will return to normal as the pandemic is brought under control.
The move to a larger motorhome comes just a few years after motorsports CEO Ross Brawn suggested the series needed to retire some of the more outlandish designs.
As part of Formula 1’s goal to be carbon neutral, Brawn said smaller motorhomes could help reduce it.
“We go to the grands prix and for nine races a year we have motorhomes transported by a large fleet of trucks, which offer the teams the facilities they need,” he said.
“For the other 15 races, everyone is very happy to wear whatever they have in there when they come in Thursday morning.”
“We go to races abroad, for example, we go to Baku, where there is a set of prefabricated houses prepared for the teams and nobody complains, everything works fine.”
“Then we go to Monza and we have our palaces with all the trucks that are needed to transport them. So in the future we want to move to something that requires quite a bit less impact in terms of logistics and transportation compared to what we have now.” .
