BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — By the middle of July, 10 races had been confirmed for the revised Formula One schedule. The original calendar featured a record 22 rounds.
Some folks have suggested that if there are fewer races it will diminish the importance and prestige of winning the world championship. But that is simply not true. This year’s world champion will be a creditable one.
It is the 70th season of the Formula One world championship. Over the years there have been as few as seven races (1950 and ’55) and as many as 21 (2016 and ’19).
When Juan Manuel Fangio was winning his championships in the 1950s, there were between seven and nine race per season. During the days of Jack Brabham, Jim Clark, Denny Hulme and Jackie Stewart, there were nine to 12 rounds. For Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Ayrton Senna, the standard was 16 races.
All of them were great world champions no matter how many races there were in their title years. If anything, I would venture to say that too many races in a season is worse than too few. It’s not that too many events diminish the feat of winning the drivers’ championship, but rather that too many races dilute the prestige and exclusivity of Formula One.
Liberty Media, which owns F-1’s commercial rights, plans to have 15 to 18 races this year. Fifteen is the magic number because the contracts with the various TV broadcasters around the world stipulate a minimum of 15 events, and if it drops below that number then Liberty will have to reimburse some of the money the broadcasters paid for the rights to broadcast the races.
Just where the races will be run is still being determined. But things are not looking good for rounds in the U.S., Mexico and Brazil because of the coronavirus situation.
“Looking at those countries right now, you cannot possibly imagine we would be going there,” Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff told BBC radio. “Based on my conversations with (Formula One CEO) Chase Carey, he doesn’t want to close any doors, but it doesn’t look like we will be going there. They (Liberty) are pretty diligent and they wouldn’t go there if it was a risk for our people.”
One plan is to have more races in Europe in countries such as Portugal and Germany that were not on the original schedule.
The races in Australia, Monaco, France, Azerbaijan, Singapore and Japan have all been canceled.
So is defending champion Lewis Hamilton changing his approach because there will be fewer races?
“I don’t think so,” he said. “It’s still a marathon; it’s still a lot of races isn’t it? However, it’s squeezed and condensed into a shorter period of time, maybe that’s what you’re referring to. It definitely isn’t a normal experience for us. We’re all under a different set of pressures and circumstances, but I think it’s great we’re back at work. It’s great teams can be back at work, that people can be back in their jobs and the business can continue.”
Hamilton’s Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas sees things the same way.
“We’re going to have fewer races than planned,” Bottas noted, “but just because they’ll be in a short period of time I don’t think the approach is different.
“When you look at it from a driver’s point of view, we’re still going to be attacking every single weekend and we want to be at the top of our game. Obviously, with the learning we’ll get from the new cars we’ll need to be more reactive as a team and be more effective with the directions we take with the car because we’ve only had a few test days with it. So we still have a lot to learn and we need to do it quick, otherwise we’ll go backward.”
Unlike NASCAR, which has been running single-day events, and IndyCar, which has had one or two-day events, Formula One has continued with its usual three-day format. The TV contracts stipulate three-day events.
Liberty is planning to close out the season with a doubleheader in Bahrain, followed by the season finale in Abu Dhabi on Dec. 13. The one thing Liberty does not want to do is announce dates and have to cancel them later.