The Imola track in Italy this weekend hosts the first European round, the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, so road transport takes over. But there are events across the next two weekends, in Monaco and Spain, bringing further complications. Three Grands Prix in successive weekends used to be rare, but they are now commonplace.
“In the old days we could never do back-to-backs, as everything was built around single events,” Ian Stone, Formula 1’s director of transport logistics and cargo, said in an interview. “Now we have two sets of key infrastructure: the E.T.C. [Event Technology Center], cabling, fiber optic network, the pit lane garage network, and we leapfrog with an A and B team.
“For Imola, one team went out last Thursday [May 8], starting the setup. They’ll stay until after the race, while the other team will be in Monaco, then the Imola team will go straight to Spain. There’s some expensive kit that you don’t have multiple versions of, so we have priority trucks that will be on the road by midnight to get there Monday lunchtime. Our deadline is to be ready to do a full system test with the F.I.A. at 2 p.m. on Thursday, and that’s an immovable object.”
Despite the quantity of equipment — which Formula 1 estimates is about 1,200 tons per race and likely to grow in 2026 with Cadillac’s arrival — and the expanded schedule, championship officials say they are managing to arrange logistics in line with their sustainability and Net Zero 2030 ambitions. Instead of the trucks burning gasoline or standard diesel fuel, they are using Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or S.A.F., and biofuels.
“When you look at the biofuels in our trucks, which power our European season, that’s over an 80 percent reduction in our carbon footprint compared to standard fuel,” said Ellen Jones, Formula 1’s head of environment, social and governance. S.A.F., Jones said, is a minimum 80 percent reduction compared with Jet-A fuel: “For sustainability, those are massive numbers.”
