Masi: "I won't visit the Red Bull Ring until the week of the event"

Race leader Michael Masi has been home in Melbourne for the past three months because of the corona pandemic. However, this week he will fly to Europe in preparation for the start of the new season. This is a lot later than planned, as he wanted to move to Europe after the Australian Grand Prix, but that didn't happen for known reasons.

Stayed at home

"I’ve just stayed during the lockdown here in Melbourne, and worked out of here," says Masi talking to Speedcafe.com, "By day, (I’ve been) catching up on work, and by night, putting on Zooms, and WebExs, and Skypes, and Teams, and whatever other form of online meeting there’s been." In this way, with a somewhat different rhythm, he kept in constant contact with all the parties involved.

Now that he is coming to Europe his schedule will look different, Masi expects it to turn around exactly. "Workload will probably continue, just in the opposite direction of what I’ve been doing here, to be honest. “Instead of doing work by day and meetings at night, it’ll be meetings by day and work at night." Also, he will not travel to the circuit well before the race in Austria.

Masi: "I won’t be going to visit the Red Bull Ring prior to the event, other than in the week of." He says he doesn't have to take a look in time, because he had excellent contact with the circuit. This also applies to the Hungaroring and Silverstone.

"We’ve got a great relationship with all of our circuits, and the guys doing Red Bull Ring have been keeping us completely up to date, and been on regular calls with them." Nevertheless, the focus is on safety as soon as everyone gets back together. That should be fine, Masi says.

"It will be more just making sure that we are collectively as refined as possible with trying to ensure these first eight events are primarily as safe as possible. Safety is paramount from our perspective, and importantly, ensuring that we can get through them, and maintain the integrity of the championship and, in a way, minimising our risk as much as possible to get through them as safely as possible"