F1 News
Spa-Francorchamps and F1 would be close to agreeing on Belgian Grand Prix
On Friday morning it was announced that the Belgian government will allow a Grand Prix at the end of August at Spa-Francorchamps. This under the condition that the race will take place behind closed doors. The race has not yet been officially confirmed by FOM, but it seems that they are close to an agreement.
Basic plan
Because the government has given permission for a Belgian Grand Prix, it is now up to Liberty Media and Spa-Francorchamps to complete the deal. The basic plan was already there, but the government was the deciding factor. That permission now means that it is possible to continue to make things right.
To GPUpdate Stijn de Boever, commercial director of the Belgian Grand Prix, says: "We already had a basic agreement with Formula 1, but we still had permission from the government to continue", which came today: "We now finally have the green light to organise something".
No fees
Because there should be no spectators, revenues will drop drastically. The financial support of the Walonian government will therefore also disappear this year. However, there is a solution in the form of omitting the hosting fees: "The idea is a partnership with Formula 1, where the region pays nothing for the race.
In addition, Formula 1 is working together to comply with the measures and to prevent the spread of the coronavirus as much as possible. After the race in Austria, they will receive a report of what went well and what did not go well, so Spa-Francorchamps can adapt to this. "We will do our best to respect social distancing and be as clean as possible."
Other measures are that the teams are present on the track in groups separately from each other and at a distance from other teams. "Spa is big of course, but each team is a family that should not be mixed with other teams". The use of external parties is also kept to a minimum, says de Boever: "We do the catering ourselves and have written down all the procedures to see how we can arrange everything, right down to the masks".
