When MotoGP decided to cancel the first race of its 2020 season in Qatar due to the difficulties it was encountering due to the advance of the then-new COVID-19 in Europe, some considered it to be an exaggerated measure, but others applauded the decision before the scenes of hospitals. overcrowded with patients in Italy , which was the start of a global crisis that, to this day, has not been fully resolved.
The decision of the queen category of motorcycling seemed like a wake-up call for Formula 1, which would start its course from March 13 to 15 with the Australian Grand Prix . Contrary to what some thought, the Great Circus went ahead with their plans and traveled to Melbourne to start their ambitious 70th season, where they would set a record for most races, 22 in total.
But the luck of the Australian GP began to twist 48 hours before the start of the first free practice session at Albert Park, when Haas quarantined four members of his team on suspicion of coronavirus, while McLaren confirmed the contagion of a person from his team, which compromised the rest of the team for the weekend.
This situation forced the Woking team to make an unprecedented decision: withdraw from the race 24 hours after the first practice session.
At the same time, Lewis Hamilton questioned F1’s decision to travel to Australia and try to contest the first race amid the growing number of infections by the new SARS-COV2 coronavirus.
With an incomplete grid and fears that the virus had already made its way through the paddock, the cancellation of the first grand prix hung in the balance, but in reality, that fear had already spread throughout the world of motorsport.
Red Bull staff pack up their gear in the pitlane
In Florida, the rumors that the IndyCar would cancel its first appointment were growing less than a day before the start of the activity on the track, while in Mexico, the third appointment of the World Rally Championship (WRC) was taking place relatively normally, although with precautionary measures such as avoiding handshakes between people or creating media zones with a social distance to reduce interaction between pilots and journalists.
The critical moment came on the morning of Friday March 13 in Australia when Chase Carey had no choice but to announce the cancellation of the first round of the 2020 F1 calendar.
“Following confirmation that a member of the McLaren Racing Team has tested positive for COVID-19 and the team’s decision to withdraw from the Australian Grand Prix, the FIA and Formula 1 have called a meeting with the other nine team principals on Thursday. in the evening. Those discussions concluded with the majority opinion of the teams that the race should not go ahead. The FIA and Formula 1, with the full support of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC) have taken the decision to that all Formula 1 activity for the Australian Grand Prix be cancelled,” the category explained in a statement.
But from the day before there were those who considered that the race would not take place, as Sebastian Vettel revealed to Romain Grosjean when he informed him on Thursday, March 12, that he was going to leave Australia because the grand prix was not going to be held.
A few hours after that decision, IndyCar followed suit in the United States with the cancellation of the first race at the St Petersburg street circuit. The pilots, who were already in the city and had made the first preparations, immediately traveled out of the area to return home, but with the doubt of not knowing when their championship would start.
NASCAR also did not hesitate to follow suit and immediately canceled the next two appointments in Atlanta and Homestead, hoping that everything could improve in a month.
Perhaps the most critical situation was experienced at Rally Mexico . The competition had started on the night of Thursday March 12 and on Friday, despite what had happened in F1, it was still standing.
But a rumor, which soon became a reality, of the closure of borders in some European countries to try to stop contagion, was the bomb that forced the midday of Saturday, March 14 to decide that the WRC would advance the end of its third test to end of the stages that day, to allow the drivers and teams to return to Europe and avoid being ‘locked in’.
That Saturday night was the last day, before a long waiting period, in which a driver was proclaimed the winner of an FIA world championship round as Sébastien Ogier consummated the WRC victory with Toyota.
The engines have been turned off since that day and it would take months to turn on again.
NASCAR, through its Cup division, was the first to adopt safety protocols and, two months after their last appointment, they returned to the track on May 17 at the Darlington speedway in South Carolina.
F1 would take until July 5 to start with the Austrian GP on a modified calendar that did not abandon Europe or the Middle East, while the WRC would postpone its return until August with a calendar that only had four more dates for a total of seven. . Formula E adopted a scheme of six consecutive races in Berlin to complete its season.
The Monaco Grand Prix of F1 was canceled, while the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500 changed their traditional dates and were held without an audience.
#22 United Autosports Oreca 07 Gibson: Philip Hanson, Filipe Albuquerque, Paul di Resta
Each of the categories had to adapt to their possibilities to complete a schedule that would allow them to have income and not make their industry disappear, but even with these efforts there were teams that could not resist the economic impact.
Two years later, the normality that motorsport knew before the pandemic is closer to returning after a more hopeful 2021 in that regard. The global health crisis is not yet 100% controlled, but vaccines do their job and the latest, less lethal strains help us return to the world we had enjoyed.
Because yes, two years, 730 days later, the world is completely different from the one we knew. The positive is that, little by little, we are recovering. And the races continue.
