Abiteboul: 'For full grandstands, we'll have to wait for the winter'.

The first eight races of the season in Europe will be held without an audience and whether or not there will be an audience is entirely dependent on the pandemic. As a precaution, Formula 1 will travel with a smaller team to rule out any infection and spread of the virus. According to Renault team boss Cyril Abiteboul, it will take some time before everything is back to normal. Probably not until next year, as soon as winter is over.

Hopefully a small group of fans

During a sponsorship event, Abiteboul responded, RACER quotes: "With grandstands full of people cheering for their heroes, full of flags, full of everything — it can be up to 120,000 people at a grand prix like Silverstone in the UK — I don’t know, it may take a while."

"We are bracing ourselves for a season that will be mostly behind closed doors with different set of economics, obviously, given the circumstances but hopefully we will be able to have a very small fan attendance over the course of the summer." So Abiteboul is hopeful that later in the season there will still be an audience coming to Grands Prix.

Complete cycle

But before all the grandstands are full again, we'll have to wait for the full cycle. It is expected that the spread of the virus will decrease as the weather gets warmer and warmer, but that could turn around in autumn and winter, making it too early to say when the doors will open for everyone.

"But looking at the way the pandemic has been developing and fluctuating and been more in control in Europe, to me it looks like we may have to wait for a complete cycle, a complete winter before we find some promoters who are prepared to take the economic risk to set up a race with grandstands with full attendance."

From a Formula 1 point of view, Abiteboul says that the expectation is that everything will be back to normal next year.