SINGAPORE – Right after this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Sepang, Malaysia, a fleet of about 200 to 300 trucks will cross the Causeway to Singapore in a race against time.
The F1 race, originally scheduled for April 10-12, was abruptly cancelled along with Saudi Arabia’s after the US and Israel attacked Iran on Feb 28.
This sudden change meant that DHL had to reshuffle its operations, ensuring all of the freight that would have travelled from Japan to the Middle East would now be delivered to Miami, US for the next race in May, and nothing would be missed out in all the ensuing havoc.
Then, in late July, it was announced that the Bahrain Grand Prix would be staged at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia, slotted in on the Oct 2-4 weekend between the Azerbaijan and Singapore races.
The resulting new triple-header added new complexities to DHL’s operations, F1’s official logistics partner since 2004.
Not only did the company now have to redirect the F1 teams’ shipments from Baku to Sepang in two to three days, but it will also have to arrange for the transportation of cargo from Bahrain to Malaysia, and move some of the existing equipment already in Singapore by land.
If any of these shipments do not arrive on time, it could spell disaster for the Singapore Grand Prix and subsequent F1 races.
‘Mission-critical’ operation
Each season involves moving around 1,400 tonnes of race cars, engines, fuel and hospitality materials across five continents for 20-plus races,
F1 is a massively complex global operation that runs like clockwork and requires an exceptional level of logistical planning.
The travelling circus can have as little as a few days of turnaround time before the next Grand Prix, and it could very well be in another continent. This means any kind of logistical disruption, like a race car not arriving on the grid due to a delayed shipment, could have severe repercussions for a Grand Prix.
Thankfully, such instances are extremely rare, says Praveen Gregory, chief executive of DHL Global Forwarding for Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei in an interview with The Straits Times.
Planning for the global operation begins once the F1 calendar for the new season is announced, typically around the middle of the year.
Each team has multiple sets of equipment travelling around the world on separate logistical routes to reduce wait times and reduce the risk of disruptions.
Throughout the season, the logistics operation would be leapfrogging the race calendar to ensure that every time the F1 contingent arrives at the next destination, everything is already set up and all the necessary equipment from the race that had just ended is now on the way to the following Grand Prix.
“It’s not very often that you read in the news about a race that did not happen because the engine or the tyres were not in place. So it is mission critical – if we don’t deliver, then the race does not happen. And we have to make our supply chain so resilient that we never fail.”
This year, however, the Middle East conflict threatened to derail the 2026 season before it even began.
The last time an F1 race was cancelled abruptly due to geopolitical tensions was the Russian Grand Prix in 2022, following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
DHL did not comment on the total cost of its F1 logistics, or the cost increase as a result of the last-minute changes in the F1 calendar, though some estimates say each team spends around US$8-10 million on logistics in a season.
Gregory said the costs are dynamic and dependent on the urgency of teams’ needs and numerous variables, which are constantly changing throughout the season, including changes in shipping routes due to geopolitical developments.
The closure of Middle East airports and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has driven up costs, as DHL has had to rely on other airlines that were also raising their rates.
And with fuel among DHL’s largest expenses, it has seen overall business costs rise 10 to 20 per cent due to the surge in oil prices.
F1 teams have increasingly turned to ocean freight to cut costs in recent years, Gregory shared, as transport expenses fall under the sport’s cost cap that limits team spending to help level the playing field.
Ocean freight would usually take around 25 to 30 days to travel from Europe to Asia, but with the Middle East conflict disrupting shipping lanes and ships also bypassing the Suez Canal, F1 teams may have to wait twice as long now for their cross-continent shipments, he said.
Sustainability partners
James Nesbitt, StanChart’s managing director and head of global subsidiaries for Singapore and ASEAN, described DHL’s F1 operations as more than just a movement of physical goods, but also a large-scale operation moving money and information.
Behind the scenes, StanChart supports cross-border payments in different currencies and advises on trade compliance.
“Physical flows will always trigger the financial flows. Everything moves smoothly because there is the movement of information between partners, so that money and goods can move… This is the whole ecosystem functioning as an orchestra to bring F1 to life,” said Nesbitt.
Recent protectionist measures like newly imposed tariffs and levies have made trade finance more complex and costly to navigate. For instance, teams may pay more for cargo shipments like merchandise to the US, and American teams like Haas could also incur additional costs importing components.
Just as F1 teams have to make real-time, split-second decisions based on track data, DHL and StanChart have to respond swiftly to sudden changes in country regulations and interest rates that could increase the logistics operator’s costs, to ensure that the F1 operation can run without a hitch, the two executives noted.
Standard Chartered is both a DHL customer and its longstanding partner in the area of sustainability.
In 2011, it became the first bank to adopt the logistics group’s GoGreen service, a carbon-offsetting scheme that channelled customer surcharges on shipments into certified environmental-protection projects.
In 2024, the two firms signed a new GoGreen Plus partnership where StanChart would help DHL to scale the use of SAF, including by absorbing the incremental cost of SAF used by DHL for the shipment of the bank’s documents. The bank estimates that it would save around 3,780 tonnes of CO2-equivalent between 2024 and 2030.
StanChart achieved net zero in its own operations in 2025 for Scope 1 and 2 emissions, and aims to be net zero in its financed emissions – investment and lending activities – by 2050.
DHL also aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. As its air freight accounts for around 90% of its carbon footprint, sustainable aviation fuel is a key solution to helping it cut emissions.
Gregory says SAF, which has 80% lower lifecycle emissions than conventional aviation fuel, accounted for about 10% of DHL aircraft’s total jet fuel consumption in 2025, higher than any airline in the world.
DHL also uses sustainable marine fuel for ocean freight, though supplies remain limited.
Gregory noted that while the price of sustainable fuels has fallen over the past five years, they remain a costly alternative and will only become comparable to regular fuels as increased demand drives higher production.
With F1 targeting to become net zero by 2030, sustainable logistics has become an increasing priority for both racing teams and DHL in recent years.
He said F1 has long been a testbed for automotive technology, and DHL’s sustainability partnership with the sport could similarly inspire its customers. While awareness and conversations about sustainability have grown among Asian companies, they are still largely unwilling to spend on such initiatives, he noted.
The way DHL is moving F1’s cargo “in a high-speed, highly agile environment in a fully sustainable manner” shows that sustainability can be achieved even when speed is of the essence, he said, calling it a good case study for others to learn from or replicate.
StanChart’s Nesbitt said the bank’s SAF partnership with DHL could result in more opportunities to help South-east Asian countries and companies transition effectively from carbon-based business models to a pure-play sustainable finance model, tapping the bank’s cross-border expertise and its extensive relationship with the logistics firm.
This would allow companies to focus on channelling capital into inherently low-carbon businesses or assets like renewable energy developers, instead of only taking steps to decarbonise.
Noting that there is often “a vacuum of leadership” in the world of sustainability, he added: “Instead of waiting for our clients to ask us to reduce costs or push a sustainability agenda, we have to get ahead of this and play a role in delivering against the sustainability goals.”
