Fitting the postponed Chinese Grand Prix into the end of the 2020 F1 calendar will be difficult even if it’s possible for the race to go ahead, Formula 1 teams believe.
The race, which was originally scheduled to take place on April 19th, has been postponed due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 coronavirus. But adding a race after the summer break would mean holding at least three races on consecutive weekends.
Although this has been done once before, the three rounds were all held inside Europe, much closer to the team’s bases. The championship is already scheduled to visit parts of Asia, North and South America over the final months of the championship.
Speaking exclusively to RaceFans, Racing Point sporting director Andy Stevenson said this is why he doubts F1 could find a viable slot for the race.
“We haven’t really looked into it in any great detail until we [get] more information,” he said. “But just looking at it sort of briefly from the outside, it would be incredibly difficult for us to do it.
“If you look towards the end of the season and where we are around the world and where the races are falling, it would be extremely difficult not to have it as minimum a triple-header. And without really checking the details I don’t think we have the infrastructure to support a fly-away triple-header ourselves as a team. We’d have to know pretty soon and we’d have to move pretty quickly.”
“Knowing also the equipment that everybody else takes, even the bigger teams, we all have similar amounts of sea freight and that would be the big challenge moving that equipment around really quickly because there’s a lot of planning goes into ensuring that arrives on time,” he added.
As reported here previously, one possibility F1 is considering is compressing the Chinese Grand Prix race weekend to two days instead of three, and holding it between the Brazilian Grand Prix and the season finale in Abu Dhabi, both in November. But it remains to be seen whether the threat from the virus will have receded to a safe level by then.
“I don’t think that anybody can say in November this virus is gone,” said Haas team principal Guenther Steiner. “We hope it’s gone because it’s not good but there is no guarantee of that.
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“If it is all gone, we’ll see how it works, if it is even possible logistically to do. There is a lot of ‘ifs’. I think that looking into it but they haven’t come back to us with a proposal how are we going to do it.”
AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost also has doubts over whether the race could be rescheduled in time. “Whether we can squeeze it in at the end of the season, we will see,” he said.
“First of all, they have to sort [it] out, they have a situation, and I doubt that they can do it within the timeframe they need to do it to be safe to go there, not running into troubles.
“If there’s a possibility, yes of course, then it’s at the end of the season. Because Abu Dhabi has to be the last race as far as I know, in the contract, maybe [move] Abu Dhabi one week later, there’s always a possibility. If the coronavirus is under control, then I think we can find a solution.”
Tost stressed he supported the decision of the authorities not to hold the race in April. “It’s the absolute right decision from the FIA and from FOM not to go to China under these circumstances because safety and health for all the employees and for all the people who also would be there is the most important factor.”
F1 races after the summer break
| Sunday | Race |
|---|---|
| 30th August | Belgium |
| 6th September | Italy |
| 13th September | |
| 20th September | Singapore |
| 27th September | Russia |
| 4th October | |
| 11th October | Japan |
| 18th October | |
| 25th October | USA |
| 1st November | Mexico |
| 8th November | |
| 15th November | Brazil |
| 22nd November | |
| 29th November | Abu Dhabi |
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