Grid, podium, parade: what adjustments were made before the restart?

The usual events of a race weekend in F1 will be largely modified this year to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

With the health measures imposed by the various authorities, Liberty Media and the FIA first of all set up the closed session as soon as the World Championship resumed in Austria at the beginning of July. But the absence of an audience will not be the only significant change.

In addition to barrier gestures, certain moments punctuating the traditional course of a meeting will have a very different appearance.

« The podium cannot be held as usual, but we are planning to do something on the grid after the race, specifies Ross Brawn, Motor Sports director of Liberty Media on the F1 website. One option would be to line up the cars on the track and the drivers will stand in front of the cars.

We can't present the trophies, because you can't have someone nearby to bring a trophy, but we've thought about it, we have plans and procedures, we're looking at how we can make it happen for television. »

If the post-race celebrations will therefore be modified, the pre-Grand Prix protocol, including the parade of drivers, grouped on a board carrying out a tour of the circuit visited, but also the starting grid, which brings together one of the highest concentrations of people at a given time over a weekend, will be reworked, with the absence of the parade.

“We are instead going to interview each of them in front of the garages, continues the former head of the Team Ferrari. For the national anthem, you cannot bring together all the drivers and you cannot have the young people of the FIA ​​Futur Stars in front of them.

These will virtually be part of the show. They will receive their uniforms and send us videos of them with a message that we can broadcast. I'm 100% confident that we'll make it an engaging and exciting product, it'll just be different.

This is the new normal. How long will this last? We don't know, but this will definitely be the new normal for the rest of the year »