Paddock, Nurburgring, 2020

Eight positive Covid-19 tests in F1 last week following Renault cases

2020 F1 season

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Eight cases of Covid-19 were identified among Formula 1 drivers, teams and personnel over the week to yesterday, according to the championship and the FIA.

As RaceFans revealed this week, two members of Renault’s F1 team tested positive while in Spain in connection with Fernando Alonso’s filming day at the circuit. Other team members were isolated as a precaution.

Last week Mercedes confirmed two positive cases within its team. One of those was included in the previous week’s figures while the second case was detected after that data was compiled and will be included in the latest count.

The cases were detected among a total of 1,506 tests conducted between October 9th and October 15th. This is the second-lowest number of tests conducted in one week since the screening programme began at the start of the world championship in July.

The relatively low number of tests this week is in part due to there being no grand prix this weekend. However the number of positive cases detected is the second-highest so far this year.

Along with Renault and Mercedes, McLaren and Racing Point are also known to have had positive tests among their team members earlier this year.

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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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18 comments on “Eight positive Covid-19 tests in F1 last week following Renault cases”

  1. The UK, where most teams are based, is heading for a major wave. I think the F1 cases will increase, maybe even explode, just a question of whether the season will be more or less finished before the peak. I’ll refrain from politicizing why it’s so unnecessarily bad in the UK…

    1. We are closed for business with Italy so 14 day quarantine. So it seems that they leave for Portugal and cannot return until after Italy and Turkey rounds. Then a break before the last triple header

      1. It must be tough in general. I wish all the best for everyone involved.

      2. Pretty sure F1 personnel are treated as athletes in other sports. Quarantine periods don’t apply.

    2. A major wave of cases yes. But not a major wave of deaths thankfully. France and Spain are ahead of us in the sense that their deaths peaked before ours in the summer and so their next peak can be used as a reference point for how we should expect ours to look. There is a slight rise and then it flattens off at that level. Nothing like the exponential nonsense we’re seeing predicted in the media. All European countries have undergone the same curves, just at different positions relative to each other and different scales. What we’re seeing now with deaths rising slightly, is the normal seasonal pattern of respiratory illnesses.

      1. The NHS predicted this in march:
        “A year is entirely plausible. But that figure isn’t well appreciated or understood,” added Hunter, an expert in epidemiology.

        “I think it will dip in the summer, towards the end of June, and come back in November, in the way that usual seasonal flu does. I think it will be around forever, but become less severe over time, as immunity builds up,” he added.

        https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/15/uk-coronavirus-crisis-to-last-until-spring-2021-and-could-see-79m-hospitalised

        The point is that NHS still won’t be able to cope with the amount of cases and measures will have to stay in place.

      2. Social distance is all we need to do. There’s no need to close anything down. As the WHO said, that just makes the poor poorer

      3. What we’re seeing now with deaths rising slightly, is the normal seasonal pattern of respiratory illnesses.

        Stop ventilating these kind of nonsens. The very heavy flu figures of 17/18 (they were extreme) are already doubled or tripled is most country’s. And the fall just started.
        I am getting sick of those uninformed people downplaying covid!

        1. On that we can agree.

        2. Well, I can only speak for my own country – Portugal -, and the fact is there have been recorded many more deaths than expected since the pandemic began. The thing is, though, lots of them can’t be explained by Covid-19 alone. Covid-19 is a serious illness, no doubt, and its pathogen, Sars-Cov-2, is still relatively unknown, but the truth is that more factors are probably at play here, like people being afraid to go to hospitals to take care of ther conditions, hospitals prioritising Covid-19 to the detriment of patients with other problems, etc, thus increasing the death toll. Just to be sure that I’m not misunderstood, I’m not denying anything or being a conspiracist of any kind. Just pointing to other problems and factors that may be affecting the fight against the pandemic.

      4. The UK has spent billions on apparently entirely ineffective test and trace programs, which were supposed to be a key part of its containment strategy. So any measure of ‘just social distancing’ is likely insufficient. Obviously the social and economic costs, including for the poorer are huge. So much worse, then, the government’s incompetence. As for Covid-19 itself, sorry, but the long-term effects of a completely new pathogen are not known. Treatment for severe cases has improved, but that doesn’t mean the disease is not very damaging to many people’s long-term health. The precautionary rule applies.

        As for Formula 1, your point makes no difference. Lots of team personnel testing positive would seriously derail individual teams and maybe the events themselves as these members isolate, irrespective of what if any symptoms they develop.

        1. The UK might have spent billions, but still didn’t upgrade its spreadsheet software which led to thousands of positive tests falling off the bottom of the Excel 2003 COVID-19 Infections workbooks in use.

          An earlier upgrade to Excel 2007 would have alleviated this issue, but would also have introduced the much-maligned “Ribbon” Office menu interface and the requirement to retrain hundreds of thousands of NHS staff on where to find all those useful bits that had now disappeared (if they could be found at all!).

          Many of Britain’s infections can therefore be traced back to Microsoft’s introduction of the “Ribbon” user interface. The Ribbon was obviously just one part of a decades-long plot of the ruling super-elite to make the rich richer.

          I’m asking everyone to support the bid to get Ribbon-Causes-COVID added to the official BBC list of Bill Gates COVID-19 conspiracies. Please give generously.

      5. Nothing like the exponential nonsense

        Well that’s because there are more and more measures in place trying to keep the infection rate down. Just social distancing clearly was not working unfortunately. Or perhaps people just don’t understand how until they are told how.

    3. In tge netherlands the 2nd wave is allready hitting hard, putting strain on regular healthcare and costing lives there now too. The reason? Some people are too dumb to just follow a few simple rules to ban out the virus. I call them paria’s or zombies

      1. the vacation was the problem when it was almost gone. People came back and the virus too. I blame Mark Rutte he should continue the smart lockdown and tell everyone this year not vacation outside the Netherlands. But no he droped it and we get the second wave earliy.

  2. Saad Toleman or Enisgn ?

  3. Yes, I’m opening articles like these to know when they will start cancelling more races or if they’ll see out the season, it’s also gonna be active in 2021 from the forecasts that came back in april, which were correct, as in 2nd big wave in autumn\winter and then smaller ones in 2021.

    1. Pff, wasn’t lucky with filters, just meant it was in answer to a previous poster that disagreed with people underestimating the v-i-r-u-s, if this comment is still not ok I give up.

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