Formula 1 'won't rush' the return of spectators

Formula 1 managing director of motorsports Ross Brawn has said nothing is "absolutely guaranteed" when it comes to spectators returning to the grandstands in 2020.

The first eight races of the season are expected to be held behind closed doors, but the status of any additional races as 'open' or 'closed' events remains unknown.

“We won’t rush that,” Brawn told the 2020 FIA eConference when asked about F1's strategy for seeing fans return to the track.

“Some of the later European races are optimistic, but we prefer not to plan on that.

“I think it’s when we go to the flyaway races that we can start to hope that we will have fans, but even that’s not absolutely guaranteed.

“To have the race in a safe and secure environment is critical. We’re going around the world, we can’t have a problem in one country that stops us going to other countries, so we’ll progress slowly on that front.”

Although declaring fans to be crucial, Brawn stressed that F1 has only been able to make such a swift comeback due to the fact racing behind closed doors was viewed as the least worse scenario.

“The fact that we were prepared to accept closed races in the early part of the season gave us more opportunity,” continued Brawn.

“That’s not the ideal, it’s not the ideal for any sport because the fans are such a crucial part of it.

"But we felt that going racing and broadcasting racing and engaging the fans with racing in what ways we could was still much more desirable than doing nothing.

“So approaching closed-fans events gave us the bulk of the European season.

“We’re going to adjust that as we progress and we come to understand where we are with this pandemic, so our first half of the season is European based.

“We’re still pretty fluid on the second half. I think we’re confident we’re going to finish in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, but we’re filling in the space in between.”

Vital to F1 is the return of spectators comes at the right time, and only when it is safe to do so. Brawn added: "We don’t want to jump in and have to jump out again when we find the problem.”

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