Wolff: F1 should reduce calendar to 16 races

Sep.16 - Toto Wolff says F1 should consider slashing the number of races on the annual F1 calendar.

Recently, FIA president Jean Todt said he backed Liberty Media's apparent intention to blow the number of races out from 21 currently to as many as 23 in the near future.

But Mercedes boss Wolff said F1 should actually consider reducing the races to as few as 15 or 16.

"This means less revenue in the short term, but a more exclusive and valuable product in the long term," he told Der Spiegel.

Wolff also said there should be less action from lights to flag, with the races reduced from a maximum of 2 hours to just 80 minutes.

"This would help to pick up some of the young people who have a shorter window of attention due to the new digital formats," he said.

He does, however, back efforts to cut costs, saying the "resource race between Ferrari, Red Bull and us for a few hundredths of a second" is crazy.

But Wolff is worried about Liberty Media's plans for a $150 million budget cap.

"If the top teams today spend $290 million, they cannot say 'Hurray, in two years time we will have $150 million'. It would mean an awful lot of restructuring," he said.

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