Liberty Media refusing to call off Bahrain, Vietnam

Formula 1 boss Chase Carey says he is not yet ready to call off either the Bahrain GP or Vietnam despite cancelling the Australian GP two hours before FP1.

Formula 1 had a rough Thursday’s night in Melbourne as Carey, the boss from Liberty Media, and the teams debated whether or not to run the grand prix after McLaren withdrew following a positive coronavirus test for a staff member.

With McLaren definitely out of the race, Mercedes told Liberty and the FIA that they too would be packing up.

Added to that Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen hopped in a plane and headed home to Europe with Max Verstappen following suit.

F1 eventually made the call to cancel the Australian GP, announcing it just two hours before FP1 was set to get underway.

The big question now is will Formula 1 head to Bahrain next weekend for what would have been round two of the championship.

“Right now, here, we are addressing the issues in Australia,” Carey told AFP.

“We will in the coming days be looking at races that are more imminent like Bahrain and Vietnam.

“And we will have further announcements and decisions on how we navigate the short-term elements of our schedule.

“We know there are issues there.”

Saying the situation was “fluid”, he added: “It’s a pretty difficult situation to predict.

“I’ll use the last five days and you look at how things have changed over the last five days.

“Trying to predict what it is going to look like going forward I think is unrealistic.

“Everybody wants an answer, we’d love to have an answer. I think you can’t force an answer right now to something you don’t have an answer to.”

Based on those comments it looks as F1 and all those working in the sport could be in for a repeat performance of Thursday night next Thursday.

As for whether Australia and the Chinese GP, which was called off months ago, will be rescheduled later in the season, Carey says it is too early to make that call.

“I don’t think at this point it’s productive to get into hypotheticals,” he said.

“Longer term we will see where it evolves. Obviously everybody hopes the world will get back to a place where it is a functioning world and functioning marketing places.”

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