Transporting cars and equipment away from Europe

[Tim Falce]

I was wondering how the cars and equipment are moved around when the teams go further afield such as the USA, Canada, China and Japan etc.
Do they ship the team trucks with the cars or use local trucks. If they use their own trucks how do they get them to far away tracks, it would take a pretty big plane to carry a 44ton artic and wouldn't ships be too slow for places like the far east?

[Tim Falce]

In best KPC tradition, anyone, come on.

[Dutton]

I thought that Bernie ran his pretty exploitative freight service?

All the big stuff goes buy boat weeks before, but the chassis and stuff go buy plane.

I think.

Perhaps it is all a dream though.

[Silk Cut Jaguar]

There's a small article on the logistics of F1 on the official site, although it's probably not as informative as you might like.

The teams use specially chartered cargo plans with the cars and equipment packed up into special containers and flown out to the races (except for Turkey where some teams use container ships)

I've honestly no idea what happens to the team trucks, it would seem like an unnecessary cost to ship those aswell so I'd presume they would leave them in Europe and hire transporters.

Do McLaren, Red Bull and co take their paddock buildings over seas or are they Europe only?

[chillibowl]

i do recall reading somewhere that the team motor homes are only used for the European races. and i think that includes the new hospitality motor homes that teams like Red Bull and Merc use.

but since this is the first race of the year and some teams have already tested in Bahrain recently maybe some equipment and vehicles were left there for the first race.


some links from pit pass that may be helpful (the first one is from last year second more recent)

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpa...s_art_id=23647

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpa...s_art_id=27226

[Rich D]

Mostly, the gear is packed into air freight containers, and then tucked locally from the airport to the track. They dont' have the big transporters and motorhomes. I was surprised that they fly between Montreal and Indinapolis, but that's how they are set up, so it works better. It's quite a feat, when you think abotu it - getting everything that is normally in quite a few trucks into these little freight containers.

[kristof14]

Bernie runs a freight airplane service for the fly-aways, hence the name.

Pretty much everything is packed into special containers designed to optimise space in the planes, the teams drop the stuff off at the airport and dont see it again until they arrive at the circuit.

[Tim Falce]

Some interesting stuff there thanks, I was thinking more about the trucks as I thought most teams have mobile workshops which would be dedicated to that team, how would this work in say the USA or Japan?

[Suze]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

i do recall reading somewhere that the team motor homes are only used for the European races. and i think that includes the new hospitality motor homes that teams like Red Bull and Merc use.

yep, don't know if all do but that's the case.

[Rich D]

Originally Posted by falcemob

Some interesting stuff there thanks, I was thinking more about the trucks as I thought most teams have mobile workshops which would be dedicated to that team, how would this work in say the USA or Japan?

They don't have them -- but my impression is they do have the contents of those trucks, but in the air freight boxes.

I know spares are routinely flown in next-day in times of crisis, rather than taking a 'just-in-case' set.