The World Sports Council announced on Tuesday that Formula 1 factories will be shuttered until June.
The rationale is straightforward: factories haven’t been open since March, and the F1 season won’t begin until early July at the earliest. To manage costs in the meantime, most teams have either laid-off or furloughed workers, and some executives have taken pay cuts.
The WSC announcement represents yet another disruption in a racing season like no other.
When COVID-19 went global, all teams and their factories shut down for three weeks. Then, F1 extended the shut down to five weeks. And now, the shutdown has been extended again. The hope is that the season will start (perhaps without fans) in Austria during July’s first weekend and, then, continue with its second race two weeks later in Great Britain.
Normally, Formula 1 would race until the second week of August and then take a three-week summer break. But the pandemic has disrupted that schedule.
And while some races have been canceled for 2020 (e.g., in Monaco and France), other countries–including Viet Nam, China, Spain, and Canada–may be able to host races later in the season–either with or without spectators.
The F.I.A., which rules Formula 1, has already said that it will allow factories to reopen for research and development in the weeks immediately before 2020’s opening race. But the governance body also made it clear that it will closely monitor those operations.
