F1 & Coronavirus : Kimi and Seb look like heroes, the FIA looks like a craven ass *again*

Who is responsible for wasting the money of thousands of people and exposing them to a deadly viral outbreak?

The Drivers – no
All the indications are that the drivers were the only responsible players in this fiasco. It appears Kimi Räikkönen and Seb Vettel left well before the FIA made any firm decision. As ex team mates it is easy to see them coming to their own conclusions and they deserve immense credit for taking the matter into their own hands and prompting decisions.

The world champion was in a difficult position as the global figurehead of the sport and must have been under great pressure to toe the line, and yet still was typically outspoken before the cancellation.

“I am really very, very surprised that we are here. I think it’s really shocking that we are all sitting in this room. There are so many fans here today and it seems like the rest of the world is reacting, probably a little bit late, but we have already seen this morning that Trump has shut down the borders with Europe to the States and you are seeing the NBA being suspended, yet Formula One continues to go on. It’s a concern I think for the people here – it’s quite a big circus that’s come here and it’s definitely concerning for me.”

Hamilton later mentioned worries about about 80 year old Jackie Stewart who was present at the event. Horrifying to think a driver who survived the most deadly years of the sport could be brought low by a virus. Lewis neatly reminds those of us young and healthy enough to be blasé about this ‘flu’ that the real threat is to our elderly and ill friends and family and how much we need to to support them.

It also reminds us of the longest running ironies and cliches in Formula, that the speed freak obsessive drivers are often the most responsible decision makers.

The Teams – no
The crisis in the Melbourne GP was prompted by a positive test on a McLaren employee, and the team immediately pulled from the race, showing the first piece of organisational bravery and common sense in the sport . It took some time before the other teams responded but when Mercedes followed McLaren that forced the hand of the FIA.
Being forced to show up for a race on the other side of the world which then doesn’t go ahead will hurt some teams as much as the fans.

Liberty Media and the FIA – partial blame
The governing body and the owners of the sport appear to be hiding behind the attitude of the Australian government. This is craven and pathetic but perhaps not surprising given than one team (Ferrari) has been able to blackmail the governing body of the sport for decades, as evidenced by the suppressed report into engine cheating as recently as last year.

The Australian government – not *quite* as bad as Trump
The current Australian government has a famously retarded attitude to modern issues such as climate change. Prime Minister Scott Morrison is seen below bragging about the harmlessness of coal in the Australian Parliament not long before the country had to deal with the worst bush fires in history.

It is not hard to see them taking the attitude of the Trump administration and seeing the COVID 19 outbreak as just another form of flu. It would appear the event would have gone ahead without the decisions made by Mercedes and some of the drivers . Having already exposed thousands of people while travelling and potentially importing virus into Australia there must have been a case to say “F*ck *t” go ahead anyway. Thankfully Mercedes, McLaren and the drivers decided there was a limit the the amount of irresponsibility they were prepared to be associated with.

Making the best of these cancellations

• If Coronavirus means the only full race weekend in 2020 was the first round of World Superbikes two weeks ago, those three races are absolute classics. Eurosport could do worse than just reshow that all year.
• We get to catch up with all the great Motorsports documentary material there is now such as Faster, Senna, Long Way Round and of course the magnificent Drive to Survive. (Season 2 just released on Netflix).
• We get to watch and appreciate the old classic motorsports movies on our big new HD screens.
• We get to catch up with insane old races on YouTube like this or this. Your favorite race of the favorite race of your friends or parents is out there somewhere. Now is the time to dig it out and make an event of it.
• In this article here I mentioned the imperial grip that the champions have on F1, MotoGP and WSB. This disruption may halt the progress of Hamilton, Marquez and Rea to yet another championship.

And remember everybody, if you’ve seen Steven Soderberg’s excellent CONTAGION again recently – “Blogging isn’t writing, it’s graffiti with punctuation.”