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Carey: The goal is to finish the calendar before the end of June

Carey: "The goal is to finish the calendar before the end of June"

02-06-2020 19:31

GPblog.com

Between the beginning of July and the beginning of September there will be eight races on a total of six tracks. The new calendar, which was presented on Tuesday, gives certainty and everything is in place to make it as safe as possible. Earlier Liberty Media indicated that they aim to drive 15 to 18 races this year, but whether that is still feasible is difficult to say.

Uncharted territory

"We feel good about it. We’re in uncharted waters. We certainly continue to have a lack of visibility beyond a fairly short timeframe," says Chase Carey in conversation with Formula1.com. "We’re engaged with all our promoters and we’re in active discussion with all of them, all of them are struggling to have the same visibility."

So it is difficult to be certain when more becomes clear about later races in this season. Carey: "We’re not going to give a deadline right now. With the fluidity of the situation, a deadline would create pressures which may not be right and realistic for the situation so we’re thinking of goals."

"Our goal would be before the end of June to if not complete the rest of the calendar, is to have a handle on it. We know what we would like to try and do." However, if something doesn't work out, there are plenty of other options. "We do expect there are races which are on the calendar which will probably still not occur. I think we certainly have options."

Elimination of races

So Liberty Media takes into account a situation that a race will be cancelled because of the pandemic. The most important thing for the organization is to ensure safety and that they do this in the right way. From that perspective, they don't want to do anything too hasty, because that could be counterproductive.

Carey: "We want to make sure we do it right but in these times, safety is still priority one, and we want to make sure we do it in a way that we’ve understood as much as possible what is required, what are the issues we have to deal with and not rush to any decisions before we can make them in the right way.”