Formula 1 has been warned the impact of Covid-19 may continue to disrupt the calendar into 2021.
This weekend sees the latest start to a season in the sport’s 70-year history, this after the first 10 races were either postponed or cancelled due to the coronavirus lockdown.
As it stands, only eight Grands Prix have been confirmed so far and the announcement of the full schedule has been delayed due to ongoing uncertainty over planned events in the Americas.
This is forcing F1 to consider alternative venues that have never hosted races before such as Mugello in Italy and Portimao in Portugal, while Germany’s Hockenheim is also open to filling an empty spot.
Some tracks are also set to host doubleheaders for the first time, with the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone already confirmed and potentially Shanghai and Bahrain also joining that list.
All of this is part of F1 CEO Chase Carey’s push to hold at least 15 races in 2020, a number he still sees as within reach.
“I think in the next few weeks we will look to land, certainly at least another chunk of the calendar, ideally we’d like to land the whole second half of the calendar,” he told the official F1 website.
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“There are a number of races we already know will be on the calendar. I don’t want to get into piecemeal addressing it, I’d like to address it holistically. But to lock the dates in we really need to figure out what other races will be on it.
“We’ve said 15-18 races and we still feel comfortable with that as a target. Right now we have a number of races we have essentially agreed with, we just haven’t firmed the date up.
“And a number of places that are much more up in the air based on circumstances in that country.”
Another key issue with flyaway races is uncertainty over quarantines and other travel restrictions in those regions, something that may also be a factor for 2021 too.
“There is probably going to be a distinction between countries such as Singapore, Vietnam, other south-east Asian countries plus New Zealand, possibly Australia, where the infection rate will be down to zero, and those other countries where they did not lockdown where there will still be a residual infection rate,” FIA medical advisor Professor Eric Caumes explained to the media on Thursday.
“So being in the south-east Asian countries would represent no risk at all for the F1 community, but on the other hand, we would probably not be welcome there – and would probably having to be looking at quarantine measures.
“But in somewhere like Brazil, which did not lockdown, the estimate is that within one to two years the whole population there will be immune.
“So F1 coming there would no longer represent a risk to the host, but it would represent a risk to the visitors.”