More F1 venues following Silverstone’s lead in aim for full crowds

2021 F1 season

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As many as seven rounds on the 2021 Formula 1 calendar are aiming to have full attendance at their rounds of the world championship, RaceFans understands.

Circuits are weighing up how many fans they can safely admit as vaccination rates rise and governments ease restrictions on travel. Vaccinated and ‘Covid-recovered’ fans were allowed into the season-opening race in Bahrain, but this weekend’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix will take place behind closed doors.

Last week Silverstone joined other British sports promoters in calling on the government to implement so-called vaccine passports, in order to allow full attendance of its grand prix on July 18th.

Six later races are also targeting full attendance. These include the subsequent two rounds in Hungary and the Netherlands, the latter having accepted a later date than last year’s cancelled race in the hope of being able to admit spectators. A fourth European venue, Monza in Italy, is also aiming to admit a full crowd.

While question marks remain over the plans of several venues in the final third of the championship, three are understood to be pursuing full attendance. These are the rounds in Russia, the United States and Brazil. The latter two countries have seen the most Covid-19 deaths of any country, over 550,000 and 350,000 respectively, and while the US death rate is falling Brazil’s continues to climb.

Prior to the British Grand Prix, Portugal and Spain have already indicated their races will be open to limited numbers of fans, while Azerbaijan’s round will be held behind closed doors. Monaco and France are also planning to welcome limited numbers of fans. Capacity at the latter will be limited to 15,000 per day, which will be divided into three zones of 5,000.

“At this moment we are optimistic about the organisation of the grand prix with this configuration,” said the promoter of the Paul Ricard race in a statement. “We are also ready for other scenarios.”

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13 comments on “More F1 venues following Silverstone’s lead in aim for full crowds”

  1. You can be certain that Hungary is pushing for a full crowd. Budapest will host a few matches in the UEFA Euro championship a month or two before the race, and our government is very keen for Budapest to be the only host that allows full capacity crowds into the stadium (if you got the vaccine). However the country has the highest death rate per capita at the moment (if the stats I saw today are correct), but sadly they are more concerned about sports events (especially football) than that… The Grand Prix hasn’t really been mentioned in the news regarding spectators, but with the Euros happening ahead, and the race track being much more open air, I would only be surprised if full capacity weren’t allowed for the race weekend.

  2. Max capacity crowd in Brazil? More likely, this year won’t have the Brazilian GP either than it having filled stands.

    1. yeah, I am kind of sceptic about that too @jerejj

      1. I suspect by then the rest of the country will have followed what happened in Manaus and South Africa after the new variant surge, with a 95% drop in hospitalizations in a couple of months despite no lockdown. Chalk it up to the live intranasal vaccine if ya know what I mean.

  3. Fundamentally I don’t think it’s fair to introduce vaccine passports until both doses of the vaccine have been offered to the full adult population. I don’t see how that can happen (nor also issue passports) by July.

    I don’t really believe passports can be turned around in 3 months even for just the current people vaccinated anyway.

    1. Tommy Scragend
      13th April 2021, 20:16

      I don’t think a “vaccine passport” will be a little book with a hard cover and lots of pages inside that you can get stamped. It’s just an expression – it’s more likely to be electronic.

    2. Vaccine passports as being discussed is referring to a proof of vaccination OR a recent negative PCR test.
      They could introduce it today.

  4. Brazil???

    LOL

    We will be lucky if we’re still alive by the end of the year.

    1. It seems the President is going for immunization by infecting the whole country. If it continue like it does now there will be a moment the survivors are immune that is not what i would have on my conscience.

  5. I find is incredibly ironic that the countries with among the highest infection and death rates are the ones trying to put maximum crowds in.

    Mind you I suppose they have shown exceptional management of the pandemic and kept it very much under control as a little flu.

    I for one won’t even consider going to a F1 race in the US or Brazil, or for that matter most European countries for at least another 12 months even though I’ll have received the vaccine this week.

  6. Dean Franklin
    14th April 2021, 8:24

    1984 British Grand Prix. Vaccine apartheid.

    1. Apartheid was a visible form of fascisme, this new kind seems invisible for the majority of people all around th globe :-(

  7. Any idea what the plan is for Spa? I have tickets rolled over from last year, however I will be driving from the UK through France. I appreciate nobody knows what is going to happen over the coming months, but I haven’t seen any published plans if they are even aiming for a full capacity crowd or just locals?

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