Liberty Media: The 'remote possibility of no racing' remains

Liberty Media

Liberty Media: The 'remote possibility of no racing' remains

Alternate venues and racing into January. Liberty Media refuse to give up on F1 2020

Sam Hall

Thursday 7 May 2020 17:49 Updated: 12:19

Formula 1 CEO Chase Carey has said that the 2020 season could run into January and that venues "not currently on our 2020 calendar" are being considered to boost the number of races it is possible to hold.

Although the season is yet to begin, a question that seems to be becoming louder is, when will the season end?

"Right now, our current targeted plan has us finishing in December," said Carey in a media conference call including GPFans. "Later in December than the original plan, so more like the 13th/14th December.

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"But we are evaluating. Certainly, finishing in January is an option. We could do that, we can do that. I think if we car, we'd like to finish in December. We'd obviously have to take a fairly long break through the holidays, you're not going to race during the holiday weeks, but it is an option available to us that we'd again have to work through with our promoters and with an array of parties to get there."

Liberty Media CEO and President Greg Maffei recently said that there was a plan in place for the worst case scenario of Formula 1 being unable to race in 2020, a comment that Carey addressed when explaining how the sport was attempting to manage a $200 million loss of revenue in the first financial quarter.

"We're actively engaged with lenders of a revolving credit facility to address potential credit issues relating to our quarterly leverage covenant," added Carey.

"They've been very supportive as we work together to identify potential changes to the covenant, to enable us to navigate through the possible scenarios, including the remote possibility of no racing in 2020, and we expect to agree the necessary changes in due course.

"We've been working tirelessly since Australia and we're actively engaged with our promoters in putting together a potential 2020 race calendar. We have two primary challenges.

"Identifying locations where we can hold the race, and determining how we transport all necesary parties and their equipment to that location for a race.

"We're in discussion with all of our promoters, along with some tracks that are not currently on our 2020 calendar to ensure we explore all options."

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Carey continued by outlining the plan for a 2020 calendar as was recently made public by Ross Brawn.

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