A peek at F1 logistics in Montreal

The circus came to town in June. Not the actual circus, but a much bigger show landed in Montreal the weekend of June 7–9: the Formula 1 Grand Prix du Montreal.

Instead of animals and clowns, this event features cars, drivers and their teams, media, volunteers, thousands of spectators and tons of equipment. In Montreal, with the event taking place on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Île Notre-Dame, all that gear and all those people are jammed onto a tiny island with only two bridges for access.

Getting the freight in place falls to DHL. As the ground-handling agent for the race, the global forwarding company manages up to 1,400 tons of freight, including race cars, tires, fuel, hospitality for all 10 teams and broadcasting equipment.

This is no easy feat, as the gear is brought in from disparate locations by multiple modes and must all arrive within a very tight timeframe. The Montreal race was the second of four North American races on the 2024 schedule. After Canada, DHL transported Formula 1 back to Europe for five more races before the summer break, which started with the Spanish GP June 23.

DHL invited Inside Logistics for a behind-the-scenes tour of operations and a chat with the two logistics brains who make it happen. Mathieu Levasseur is the motorsports event manager at DHL Global Forwarding, and Christian Pollhammer is the senior event logistics coordinator with F1. It was the Wednesday before the race, and Île Notre-Dame was an anthill of activity, with thousands of workers in constant motion setting up concessions, grandstands and fencing. Dozens of forklifts – every single one that could be rented within hundreds of miles – buzzed back and forth along pit lane, delivering crates of freight and maneuvering equipment into place for each of the teams.

The race cars had arrived days before, and the teams were hard at work, mostly behind screens in their pit stalls reassembling and tweaking their setups. Meanwhile, the drivers were over at Montreal Olympic Stadium doing promotional stunts for Red Bull.

But before all that could happen, DHL got to work. After the Miami GP in early May, equipment that stays in North America was loaded onto 100 trucks and driven north. DHL stored it until it was required onsite in Montreal. Meanwhile, the teams and cars returned to Europe, where they contested the Italian and Monaco GPs. Equipment for these races is moved around Europe and held at the teams’ own headquarters or storage sites when not in use.

“Right after the race in Monaco concluded, that gear was packed up and sent back to the team HQs for sorting and repacking,” Pollhammer explained. It was then delivered to DHL for air freighting to Canada. At the same time, other gear that had been used at the Japan GP in April was making its way to Montreal via ocean freight, landing in Vancouver before being trucked cross-country to Montreal.

“Every team has four, five or six kits, and it’s always moving, even in the off-season,” Levasseur said. “We ship the cargo for the first race of the next season. The air freight is always going to fly to the race, which is predictable. So that will never be late. Ocean freight: they always plan ahead, like a good month and a half before. The Japan race was in early April, so that’s the time they took from April to get here.”

Last-minute items are called “late freight” and can arrive right up to the Saturday of race weekend. This typically includes parts for the cars that have been refined in the teams’ home workshops. DHL airfreights these shipments on commercial flights and facilitates their transport to the race location the same day.

Remarkably, the DHL team that makes this all happen onsite is small. Levasseur and Pollhammer are joined by another eight people on the admin side, while the crew on the ground who load and unload trucks and move the gear to the right location is about 10 people. “They’re efficient,” Pollhammer said.

After the checkered flag

While F1 setup is a week-long affair, getting out of town after the race is a bit of a panic. “For us to get out of here, there is enormous time pressure because two weeks later we race in Spain. So, the teams need to go back, wait for the freight to arrive back in the factories, need to transfer it back onto their trucks and then have to travel up to 1,500 kilometres to reach Spain. So that is a very tight turnaround for us,” Pollhammer said.

He explained they often give teams nine or 10 hours to get packed up after a race. “We tell them six o’clock in the morning, seven o’clock. But because we need to move quick, the timeframe is much shorter. Six to seven hours is the minimum they need to pack up. Much less than that we can’t do.”

“I would say because I’m a logistics geek, I would prefer almost watching the team packing up, which is a race after the race,” Pollhammer added. “It’s ridiculous how fast they operate just to repack it. Everybody knows which part goes in which kit.”

Carbon footprint

With all the tight turnarounds and airfreight being used, both F1 and DHL are aware of the significant carbon footprint of the event’s logistics. F1 has set a target of carbon neutrality by 2030. DHL uses multimodal logistics solutions, including air, sea and road transport, to minimize its impact. Rail is only an option when there is a lot of time to work with, Levasseur said, because if it gets stopped for some reason, there’s no way to retrieve the cargo. That’s why the gear that arrived by sea from Asia was trucked from Vancouver, he explained.

For air freight, DHL employs fuel-efficient Boeing 777 aircraft, achieving a 17 per cent reduction in emissions compared to older planes. In Europe last year, DHL introduced a fleet of biofuel-powered trucks, with each truck reducing emissions by an average of 83 per cent compared to conventional diesel trucks. This season, the number of biofuel-driven trucks has more than doubled, reaching a total of 37.

In addition, the waste generated by the teams on site is removed. “Nothing stays in the country as garbage,” Levasseur said. That includes the used tires, of which there are seven or eight container loads for each race. They get shipped back to Pirelli in Romania or Italy for recycling, while teams pull a few that are labelled for testing, also at Pirelli’s facilities.

“The partnership between DHL and Formula 1 is strong not only because of our logistics expertise but also due to our shared commitment to sustainability. Both organizations prioritize eco-friendly practices and continually seek innovative sustainable logistics solutions for upcoming seasons,” Levasseur noted.

Clearly, with 20 years of experience moving Formula 1 around the world, DHL is on its game. Proof positive is that the two organizations have just inked a new nine-year contract that will see DHL continuing to maintain the pace.