Max Verstappen Crowns F1 the New Taylor Swift as He Bashes Hypocritical Sustainability Preachings: “We Travel Too Much”

It’s hard not to live life large as an F1 driver, as the expensive sport comes with a lavish lifestyle. Traveling from continent to continent with the whole circus is an expensive affair, and transporting the 140 million-dollar cars around the globe is not cheap either. Aside from the plane tickets, just hosting an F1 event is a story of its own, and Max Verstappen has noticed the expenditure.

Recently, the news has been about Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour being an expensive event that includes multiple private jet flights around the world. Many fans have the comfort of talking about the effects that her travels alone have on the environment. As Formula 1 moves towards a more sustainable sport, Max Verstappen shares his thoughts about how the sport is no different from the Eras tour.

Before the Imola GP, Max Verstappen was interviewed by Bloomberg Television, and that’s where the topic of F1’s sustainability came up. The Red Bull driver shared his thoughts, saying, “We’re still traveling a little bit too much left and right. I think it would be it would make a bit more sense to start like we did in Asia, maybe have a few back to backs and then in Europe or the US.”

The 3-time world champion knows the intricacies of how much goes around to host a race and shares, “I understand that having two or three races in the same country or in the same continent [continuously] maybe sell fewer tickets, but at the end of the day, what are you trying to sell, tickets or the sustainability story?”

His main takeaway from this is to stop believing that F1 will be zero-carbon neutral as if the 20 cars are burning green fuel, the travel from one country to another cannot be that eco-friendly. When it comes to moving the whole F1 circus, we are talking about thousands of people involved in the sport, traveling around the globe 24 times this season.

What does Max Verstappen think of having 24 races in a season?

Having to move so much must be tiresome for anyone considering that teams have to spend a better half of the year working on the season. Max Verstappen has been vocal about not wanting to spend most of his life in F1 due to not getting enough time for friends and family.

At the start of the season, during the Bahrain Grand Prix, Verstappen explained his take on the race-filled season, saying, “From my side, I’ve said it before: this is not sustainable.” He continued to explain, “I love racing a lot and I do it a lot also outside of Formula One.”

His life has much more than just his job, the Dutch champion explains, and then he brings up his main problem with having 24 races a season. The Dutchman stated, “But if people in the sport start shortening their careers because it’s too much I think that’s a shame and so hopefully of course we can have a look at that for the future.”

With that said, Verstappen lays his thoughts on the table, expressing how, with such a busy calendar, the travels result in emissions matching Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, if not more. If F1 wants to be sustainable, it needs to look at more than just the fuel that is being consumed; the main factor that causes emissions is the logistics of the sport.

Do you think Formula One will be a more sustainable sport in the future? Will it happen by reducing the number of races per season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.