If you were watching the F1 race last week in Hungary, you might have been glued to the screen with the one-two finishing positions of the McLaren F1 team as they continue to improve. As a fan of the McLaren team and as someone who has completed sleep, fatigue management and jet lag advice for them in collaboration with Salus Optima, I could not have been happier. However, the discussion over who should have won the race is one we will save for another time.
Max Verstappen is leading the driver’s championship by 76 points, or three race wins (25 points per race win), finished fifth overall and is a world-class racing driver with multiple world championships. You may have noticed the difficulty Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing) had during this race. Max seemed irritated and frustrated on the radio during the race, not his usual cool and calm self. He had some interesting outbursts with his engineer regarding the team strategy. The commentary team alluded to why this may be.
Sky Sports commentator David Croft (Crofty) said:
“Max sounds like a man who could have had a better night’s sleep last night.”
Crofty and Nico Rosberg “noted” that Max was awake until 03:00 am competing in sim racing. This was only 12 hrs before the lights went out to start the Hungarian F1 race. Towards the end of the race, Max ended up in a driving incident that saw him being summoned to the stewards after the event after he and Lewis Hamilton collided – you can watch the video here.
Scientific research shows that sleep loss impacts cognitive performance, including reaction time and selective and constant attention.1 In addition, such sleep loss may impact our mood and behaviour and generally make us grumpier. In a recent systematic review and meta-analysis looking at 50 years of data, it found that sleep loss affected anxiety, emotions and depressive symptoms.2 Sleep loss has also been shown to affect communication3 and decision-making, which may have been the case as he stated that people who criticised his driving and team radio messages during the Hungarian Grand Prix could “f%#k off.”
Whether you are an F1 driver or not, you may be at risk of such behaviours after a bad night’s sleep, sleep loss, or if you have incurred multiple nights of poor sleep. It may impact your cognition, mood and leadership. Let’s hope this week at Spa in Belgium is slightly a little more relaxed before the summer break.
Note: For those not familiar with F1, it occurs over 9 months and consists of 24 races in more than 20 countries. Each race week generally consists of three practice sessions, a qualifying session, and a race. Although some weeks have a sprint qualifying and sprint race instead of practice 1 and 2. In addition to the travel, jet lag, the racing, there are media, fans, sponsorship duties and many more sport and non-sport-related factors. It is not uncommon for these drivers to have poor sleep and be tired.
References
- Jarraya S, Jarraya M, Chtourou H, Souissi N. Effect of time of day and partial sleep deprivation on the reaction time and the attentional capacities of the handball goalkeeper. Biological Rhythm Research. 2014;45(2):183-191.
- Palmer CA, Bower JL, Cho KW, et al. Sleep loss and emotion: A systematic review and meta-analysis of over 50 years of experimental research. Psychological Bulletin. 2024;150(4):440-463. doi:10.1037/bul0000410
- Banks S, Landon LB, Dorrian J, et al. Effects of fatigue on teams and their role in 24/7 operations. Sleep Medicine Reviews. 2019/12/01/ 2019;48:101216. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2019.101216