For regular travelers, jet lag causes drowsiness, disorientation and agitation, all of which affect performance. For Formula 1 drivers and their teams, the high level at which they operate magnifies the impact. “There is a clear link between jet lag and then poor performance,” said Haas physio Faith Fischer-Attack. “If you compare it with [they] There is a clear consequence of what to do on the car. ,
There are 22 Grand Prix from March to November, which often involve long journeys. The calendar will expand to include China next year; Another race in the United States in Las Vegas; and Qatar, which means longer trips. Although Formula 1 teams sometimes rent an aircraft for short flights between European races, longer trips are made on commercial airlines.
“It’s something you learn to deal with,” Daniel Ricciardo, a McLaren driver, told GQ this year. “We can do a little preparation, so before a certain time zone, we can try to optimize a few nights before we get into that time zone, but sometimes you have to suck it up and move through it. Everyone thinks you got used to it, you’ve been doing it for so long, but sometimes it’s luck, sometimes I’ll sleep strangely and sometimes not.
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz’s physio Rupert Manwaring said there are no firm rules for moving to the new time zone. “The simple rule is for every hour difference you need a day to adapt,” Manwaring said. “If it’s a time difference of nine hours we’ll try and reach those number of days already, but it can be a challenge during a season, because staying home is important outside of the race. We work with humans. Doing it, not with a robot.”
This would include easing to a new time zone before travelling – such as keeping clocks in advance of the destination time. Sleeping on a plane is also essential during long flights. “Jet lag symptoms last between three and five days, but it can be between seven and nine days in terms of negative performance impacts, and we may not realize it,” Manwaring said.
Caffeine is also important, but it requires careful management. “You take it very little and often, not in large portions,” he said. “We wouldn’t use it immediately after waking up and after 1 p.m., because caffeine has a much longer half-life and can stay in the body for up to 10 hours, so you have to be careful about the night ahead.”
Physio John Malvern at McLaren’s Lando Norris said light exposure, or avoidance of it, was “another big factor in helping you shift your body clock,” as it effectively affects “your brain and its Telling hormones released that it is ‘time to wake up’
Moderate to intense exercise immediately after waking up, or even a light session before bed can help the body adapt. “Carlos loves to play golf, so it’s great to send him off to do that – natural light and not too wide, so we can fit in training around him,” Manvering said. “It’s a nice healthy hobby to change time zones.”
The next two races will be particularly taxing. Singapore is a night race, starting at 8 pm, so the teams will have a ‘wake up’ schedule from around 1 am to 6 am. To sleep in the early hours once it is dark.
Then it moves on to the next race in Japan, which begins at 2 p.m. They are the first two of six events involving the United States, Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi, linked by trips to Europe. .
“They have to be quite flexible,” Fischer-Attack said of the teams. “There is no period of time for adjustments.”
Experts said they believed traveling east was a greater challenge than west. “You’re shortening the day, so you have to move your body clock,” Malvern said. “West, you’re prolonging the day – and it’s a little easier to entertain yourself while staying up late.”
This is especially useful in a sport like Formula 1, where employees travel in groups, meaning socializing is a jet lag strategy. “For me the simplest – and not always the most practical – is going out as early as possible, not just for the time, but the climate,” Nicholas Latifi, who drives for Williams, said of a race trip. “I have always found it more difficult to go east and much easier in the west; In the west you just get up early, but in the east you can’t sleep at night and want to go to bed in the middle of the day.”
There is also the effect of flying so much. “Travel fatigue is a relatively new phenomenon that we see day to day, but it is not yet supported by research,” FischerAttack said. “It’s the accumulation of a lot of travel: You may not suffer from jet lag, but the actual physical activity of traveling will increase fatigue levels.”
Indeed, teams annually spend about 10 full days, or 240 hours, on planes, crossing multiple time zones.
