Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, 2019

F1 can’t hold races again ‘until public will accept it’ – Seidl

2020 F1 season

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Formula 1 has been warned it must not resume racing until the general public believes it is acceptable for sporting events to be held again.

Sporting events worldwide have been called off as a result of the social distancing measures governments have imposed to contain the pandemic. McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl said this makes it “difficult” to consider when the 2020 F1 season would be able to begin.

“First of all, as always, the most important thing is to protect our people,” he said. “So definitely [we] can’t go back to racing until we definitely know that our people are safe.”

Many countries, including those home to F1 teams’ bases, have imposed ‘lockdowns’ restricting the movement of people. Some have banned public gatherings for several months. The resumption of racing will therefore “depend on the guidelines of our home countries”, said Seidl.

“First of all, the travel guidelines, the guidelines we get for our daily life, we need to see if that allows us to travel out and back into our home countries. It’s important, obviously we need to wait for what the different countries are deciding, whether races should happen.

‘We can’t go racing until we know our people are safe’
“Also we need to see what the promoters are deciding. Because especially with the changes of dates for a lot of races, the promoters also need to be up for it. And it needs to make sense from the commercial point of view also, for the promoters for Formula 1.”

However Seidl stressed F1 must ensure is does not resume racing too soon and risk being accused of using resources which are needed elsewhere.

“What I think is an important point is the public acceptance of life events happening again. I think it’s important that we only go back to go racing once we also have certainty that when it comes down to protective equipment, to the number of tests for people that this is all in place and available to people that actually need it and that we are not the ones burning these tests or these materials just for going back racing.

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“I think there’s a big desire from people, from the public, from the fans that especially this lockdown situation we are all in at the moment that sporting events are happening again, even if it’s just on TV. But again obviously there’s a lot of different aspects that need to be considered.”

F1 is known to be exploring holding events without audiences, potentially reducing the numbers present at tracks from hundreds of thousands to less than 2,000. Seidl said McLaren would be able to reduce the number of non-racing staff needed if F1 chooses to race behind closed doors.

“Regarding [the] operational personnel, which is pretty much defined also by the regulations, I don’t think it will be much different compared to normal race events because you simply need all the people in order to operate the cars, to service them during a weekend and to race them, to do the pit stops.

“[But if] the races are not open to the public and not open to guests, in an environment of a team, you will go to the events with less people on the marketing side.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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6 comments on “F1 can’t hold races again ‘until public will accept it’ – Seidl”

  1. Interesting, and seems quit sensible.

    And it needs to make sense from the commercial point of view also, for the promoters for Formula 1.

    Is it me, or have i missed this really being addressed much at all by F1 teams, owners etc, and even here t’s given here implicitly (but I do recall Racefans.net discussing it before): some promoters might be fine with a race w/o audience, as it is all seen as PR for the country, and no one in power to counter that, but for many venues, the tracks have already been struggling making the numbers match even with the audience, so how can non-audience races make sense for them under their usual contracts?

    If, as I heard mention in recent weeks ‘at most a european based season with some fly-aways’ – presumably those are the state run races that find no-audience refreshingly easy to manage w/o risk of counter voices – is the model to go, then it really needs addressing, as most of those European races seem to be in the category of needing audiences to spend money at them in order for the race to make financial sense even in a normal year.

    Not really on topic maybe, but it’s something that I keep wondering whenever I think about even the possibility of F1 running any time this year.

    1. @bosyber Dieter had put forward the idea of Liberty Media hiring the circuit, almost as if it were a private test session, on the premise that even if Liberty has to effectively privately hire out the circuit and pay the circuit owners for the costs associated with holding the race, it would at least allow them to collect the money they would forfeit by defaulting on their TV broadcast contracts.

  2. Belgium canceled all public events until the end of August, yesterday. Including the Grand Prix. Other European countries will most likely follow suit soon.

    This means the European window for racing will be gone (you can’t really race here in fall or winter obviously). This all but kills the prospect of a 2020 season and quite frankly it might be getting even worse for F1 (and sports in general quite frankly).

    Most countries will incrementally start to open up parts of society/economy over the next few weeks and months, but the social distancing measures will largely remain. This means that in the best case scenario the virus won’t flare back up again and events like festivals, concerts, sports events, and international travel will be amongst the last things to come back. If it does flair back up again, however, we could be facing multiple lockdowns in the next 12 to 24 months until a vaccine is invented ánd distributed to all 8 billion people (an operation that could take another 12 to 24 months at least) before we can afford luxuries like sports again.

    1. Yes, belgium isn’t doing too well, I’ve seen 300 deaths a day for the last few days, and for such a small country that’s not great already being past china’s total death toll. And yes, it could take a while and most likely the season is over before it started for 2020.

    2. A GP behind closed doors remains a possibility for Spa

  3. Sounds very German to me.

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