Silverstone does not abandon F1 plans
Silverstone's managing director Stuart Pringle is confident that a sensible solution can be found for the British Grand Prix should the originally planned dates for the races not go ahead.
Since the series of postponement of races, F1 has been busy with working on a new, revamped calendar for the 2020 season. Following a double-header race in Austria, the sport was scheduled to head to Silverstone, Great-Britain where the third and fourth round of the curtailed F1 2020 campaign would have been staged.
The dates of the races have been initially pencilled in for July 26 and August 2. However, that plan has become doubtful after the British government announced that everyone entering the country must be quarantined for fourteen days. This new rule is set to be introduced on June 8 and will be reviewed after three weeks.
Stuart Pringle said that Silverstone has a great flexibility which would also allow to move the original dates to August.
"I'm not clear on dates, at the moment. It really is dependent on whether the championship can get started. We have a good deal of flexibility here at Silverstone so we can accommodate later dates in August if required, possibly even into September conceptually," he is quoted as saying by Sky Sports.
The circuit chief is confident that Silverstone’s infrastructure would allow a short lead time to prepare the races if the dates need to be altered.
"But it's not so much about what we can accommodate, or how long it will take us to stand up - and the answer to that is pretty quick because we've got all the infrastructure here - but it's can the championship piece together a calendar that allows them to go from country to country?”
Speaking to the F1 Show, Pringle said that despite the flexibility of the Silverstone circuit, the Formula 1 championship needs to have clear rules in order to establish a new calendar.
"Formula 1, as a championship, needs that exemption and needs to understand where it is, because they've got to plan.”
"It's a huge logistical operation. They've got to knit together a series of dates and get a freight plan that works and know that the impact on the personnel is. That requires some clarity,” he concluded.
