BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Where does Formula One go from here?
The answer is nowhere for a while. Like the NTT IndyCar Series, the opening race of the F-1 season was canceled at the last minute. And like IndyCar and NASCAR, the F-1 season is on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Using hindsight is easy, and in hindsight the Australian Grand Prix, scheduled for the same March 15 weekend as the St. Petersburg Grand Prix for the IndyCar set, should have been canceled many weeks ago, long before more than 100,000 fans traveled to Melbourne for the F-1 race.
The fans will be reimbursed for the tickets they bought, but they are stuck with their travel expenses — and some traveled halfway around the world to Australia.
But the problem was that the situation surrounding the worldwide COVID-19 crisis was changing not only by the day but by the hour.
During a press conference at Melbourne’s race track on Friday morning of race weekend, Formula One CEO Chase Carey used the word “fluid” many times to describe the situation leading up to the decision — which had finally been made at about 2:30 that morning — to cancel the race.
The question now is where does F-1 go from here? Carey was asked during that press conference if the Bahrain Grand Prix scheduled for the weekend after Australia would go ahead. He declined to answer, saying the focus was on Melbourne. A few hours later an F-1 team member told SPEED SPORT: “We are packing up to go back to the England, not to Bahrain.”
The F-1 circus, of course, was never going to travel to Bahrain. And it did not take long for the FIA and F-1 to officially announced the April races in Bahrain and Vietnam have joined China in being postponed. That terminology is important financially because the promoters of the first four races would have paid $200 million for the privilege of hosting a grand prix. Sixty-two percent of that is divided unevenly among the teams. As this provides the majority of their income, they cannot afford to cancel the events.
How long can the opening of the F-1 season be delayed?
As this issue of SPEED SPORT went to press, when the season would start was uncertain, as races in Spain, the Netherlands and Azerbaijan were postponed and the Monaco Grand Prix was canceled. That meant the earliest the season would start would be the June 12-14 Canadian Grand Prix.
The Concorde Agreement stipulates there must be a minimum of eight races with 14 cars for a year to be an official world championship season. But the teams and commercial owner Liberty Media will want as many races as possible in order to make as much money as possible. If the teams stay home, they don’t get paid, but they still have to pay their staff, and wages constitute the majority of any team’s budget.
China would have paid $50 million for its race this year, so it is more profitable to have events such as China and Vietnam slotted back in than the European races, which fork out a measly $20 million.
The strategy now will be to scrap the three-week August break, have some two-day race weekends, have some tripleheaders and extend the season well into December.
“I think by freeing up the August break we give ourselves several weekends where we can have a race,” Ross Brawn, F-1’s managing director of motorsports, told Sky TV. “I think we can build a pretty decent calendar for the rest of the year. It will look different, but it will still preserve a good number of races.”
The hope is, of course, that the COVID-19 pandemic will be over in the second half of the year. But will it still linger in countries that have new race dates? It would not be fair to the fans to pay to travel to a country only to have the race canceled at the last minute.
Where does F-1 go from here? Using hindsight and looking at the Melbourne fiasco will be important to not make the same mistakes later in the year. But for now, the situation remains fluid.