COVID-19 could affect more races this year.

[Pyrone89]

I am now thinking we will not run a 2020 season and when that starts dawning teams will want to know wether or not to start on 2021 cars or if the regs will get postponed (bad idea in my book).

[Jolle]

There are a few options but all will cost a lot of money. They could write off this season and put everything on ice until next year, run a few races without audience, etc etc.

first and foremost is that they need to establish a fund of some kind. This could be done by the four wealthy teams (Renault, RedBull, Ferrari/PM and Daimler) together with the FIA and Liberty, maybe with some big sponsors (Heineken, Santander) so at least the workers of the bottom five/six teams (AT is basically RBR so their costs should be covered) will be paid this year, together with a fund for feeder teams that will loose income (and are very dependent of F1 races going ahead) as for companies in the supply chain.

With no F1 weekends, billions will stop flowing.

[Hail22]

Smart move would be to postpone 2020, freeze 2021 R&D and run 2021 with the current cars of 2020 (also frozen in development).

What do you think?

[JonoNic]

One thing about this virus. Internet access might take some strain. When we started online teaching in China, it crashed. Apparently government schools are required to sing the national anthem and this had to be done online. That morning 200 million students streaming caused a major crash.

How will this affect F1 staff if they can work from home?

[PlatinumZealot]

Smart move would be to postpone 2020, freeze 2021 R&D and run 2021 with the current cars of 2020 (also frozen in development).

What do you think?

Agreed.

Postpone new tech regs. Run 2021 with 2020 cars on the 2021 budget cap and governance regs.

UK will be just getting warmed up with the Virus by Summer with their herd immunity plan so no teams will be welcomed to fly in by October. So might as well can this season.

[subcritical71]

Smart move would be to postpone 2020, freeze 2021 R&D and run 2021 with the current cars of 2020 (also frozen in development).

What do you think?

Agreed.

Postpone new tech regs. Run 2021 with 2020 cars on the 2021 budget cap and governance regs.

UK will be just getting warmed up with the Virus by Summer with their herd immunity plan so no teams will be welcomed to fly in by October. So might as well can this season.

Seems logical. What to do with all the excess staff during this time...

[timbo]

Smart move would be to postpone 2020, freeze 2021 R&D and run 2021 with the current cars of 2020 (also frozen in development).

For that, somebody has to homologate the cars in their current state. Sure than can hire F1 forum members to play "spot the difference", but that is not freezing...

[e30ernest]

The alternative is to lock everyone up, wait for a few weeks, then let them all out again. Then what happens? You get a pandemic spread of the virus through the newly released population because no one has any immunity. At that point, you're quite simply screwed.

Has it actually been confirmed that you get immunity after you recover from it? If not, then it's still a very big gamble (what the UK is doing) IMO. I'm not saying it's wrong, (I don't have an opinion on that to be honest) but I guess time will tell.

Our country (or rather my city) is in a weird "lockdown" now. Social gatherings are banned. The malls are closed with the exception of groceries, healthcare clinics and pharmacies (which are commonly placed inside shopping malls). The city's borders are closed, except if you live outside it, but work inside it (seriously, how can this help?!?). All domestic sea, air and land transportation to and from the city are closed, but international flights still take-off and land....
Offices are not required to shut down, so people still commute to work (albeit there seems to be slightly less people since some elect to work from home) but manufacturing and other service industries remain open. There's a curfew imposed (8pm-5am) but you are exempt if you have work at these hours, you are a healthcare professional or you are going to seek medical attention.

So I guess the UK measures aren't as weird as the measures in my city are.

We had a trip to the USA originally planned for 31 March (we planned it late November last year) but that was cancelled as far back as early February due to Covid-19. So at the very least, the airlines knew it was bad that far back. Our government banned flights to and from China and its territories as early as January. I don't know why the FIA thought it could continue to do races.

Those hoping the "hot weather" will help, I doubt it to be honest. My country has hot weather (we are on the high 20s - low 30s currently every day) but it is still spreading here. Unless the spread is slowed down, I don't think we'll get any races this year TBH.

[Manoah2u]

Geesh. It's pretty clear by now the virus is slowly disappearing in China, and this will eventually also happen in Europe.
F1's already been postponed to may, and no race except for Austrailia, which has been cancelled anyway, would have too much of a problem finding another spot during the year.
Spain can even be postponed by a week, by then we're in the third week of may, and the virus will be eradicated by then.
Bahrain is relatively close to Azerbaijan and there's space in between to host the GP.
Vietnam can take place either a week before Singapore, or have Marina bay race a week earlier and have 'Nam take that weekend.
Host China before the Japanese GP and have the Dutch GP before the Belgian GP.

What a huge amount of exegeration in 'ooh 2020 is done for' without any reasonable base whatsoever. You guys must be the same people that fight over a pack of toilet paper.

[JonoNic]

The alternative is to lock everyone up, wait for a few weeks, then let them all out again. Then what happens? You get a pandemic spread of the virus through the newly released population because no one has any immunity. At that point, you're quite simply screwed.

Has it actually been confirmed that you get immunity after you recover from it? If not, then it's still a very big gamble (what the UK is doing) IMO. I'm not saying it's wrong, (I don't have an opinion on that to be honest) but I guess time will tell.

Our country (or rather my city) is in a weird "lockdown" now. Social gatherings are banned. The malls are closed with the exception of groceries, healthcare clinics and pharmacies (which are commonly placed inside shopping malls). The city's borders are closed, except if you live outside it, but work inside it (seriously, how can this help?!?). All domestic sea, air and land transportation to and from the city are closed, but international flights still take-off and land....
Offices are not required to shut down, so people still commute to work (albeit there seems to be slightly less people since some elect to work from home) but manufacturing and other service industries remain open. There's a curfew imposed (8pm-5am) but you are exempt if you have work at these hours, you are a healthcare professional or you are going to seek medical attention.

So I guess the UK measures aren't as weird as the measures in my city are.

We had a trip to the USA originally planned for 31 March (we planned it late November last year) but that was cancelled as far back as early February due to Covid-19. So at the very least, the airlines knew it was bad that far back. Our government banned flights to and from China and its territories as early as January. I don't know why the FIA thought it could continue to do races.

Those hoping the "hot weather" will help, I doubt it to be honest. My country has hot weather (we are on the high 20s - low 30s currently every day) but it is still spreading here. Unless the spread is slowed down, I don't think we'll get any races this year TBH.

I'm not willing to gamble 20 - 30% of my lung capacity through herd immunisation. This is what doctors from Hong Kong, China, S Korea and Vietnam are saying about those who recovered. These people were healthy before being infected.

[AJI]

Geesh. It's pretty clear by now the virus is slowly disappearing in China, and this will eventually also happen in Europe.
F1's already been postponed to may, and no race except for Austrailia, which has been cancelled anyway, would have too much of a problem finding another spot during the year.
Spain can even be postponed by a week, by then we're in the third week of may, and the virus will be eradicated by then.
Bahrain is relatively close to Azerbaijan and there's space in between to host the GP.
Vietnam can take place either a week before Singapore, or have Marina bay race a week earlier and have 'Nam take that weekend.
Host China before the Japanese GP and have the Dutch GP before the Belgian GP.

What a huge amount of exegeration in 'ooh 2020 is done for' without any reasonable base whatsoever. You guys must be the same people that fight over a pack of toilet paper.

You're a funny guy.

[hollus]

Any links to that loss of lung capacity? It sounds counterintuitive, but it is now the second time I see that mentioned, both in F1T.

[JonoNic]

Any links to that loss of lung capacity? It sounds counterintuitive, but it is now the second time I see that mentioned, both in F1T.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronav ... 20%251%24s
There are links in China too, but those links are not always accessible outside of China it seems.

[GPR-A]

Geesh. It's pretty clear by now the virus is slowly disappearing in China, and this will eventually also happen in Europe.
F1's already been postponed to may, and no race except for Austrailia, which has been cancelled anyway, would have too much of a problem finding another spot during the year.
Spain can even be postponed by a week, by then we're in the third week of may, and the virus will be eradicated by then.
Bahrain is relatively close to Azerbaijan and there's space in between to host the GP.
Vietnam can take place either a week before Singapore, or have Marina bay race a week earlier and have 'Nam take that weekend.
Host China before the Japanese GP and have the Dutch GP before the Belgian GP.

What a huge amount of exegeration in 'ooh 2020 is done for' without any reasonable base whatsoever. You guys must be the same people that fight over a pack of toilet paper.

Besides the current chaos and impact of COVID-19, you do know that, while all other teams have their factories running, Ferrari and most likely Alpha Tauri could not have been running? That means, it's an unfair competition between the teams who have been working and those who aren't. Does it make sense to have a season where one of the protagonists is handicapped?

[Phil]

This half-assed attempt to slow things down is what will ultimately cripple the economy. It would be just better if every government had the courage to do a complete lockdown for a couple of weeks, rather than this reactive approach that has gone on for days and will go on for weeks until the inevitable needs to be done anyway.

As for China; I'm as well hesitant about their numbers. The government control information there, so I'm skeptical to what is truth and what isn't. I'd take the numbers from anywhere outside China as reference for anything. Even here, the numbers are to be taken with a grain of salt - most countries are only testing people with severe symptoms, not everyone. The numbers are way higher than the stats that are being thrown around (and again, there's also the incubation period to consider).