“Frankly, if we are not forced to do it…” – Renault boss Cyril Abiteboul has a wonderful idea to be imposed for F1 teams in the wake of Covid-19.
Formula 1 did an awfully lot of good things right this season. The fact they pulled off a 17-race season could be a case study for global sports this decade. Only three drivers tested positive throughout the season – Sergio Perez, Lance Stroll, and Lewis Hamilton. And more significantly, all of them came back fit, after a good recovery.
The ‘Project Pitlane’, which involved the 7 UK-based teams, did a wonderful job of developing medical ventilators and other equipment. That has certainly inspired Renault F1 boss Cyril Abiteboul, who wants such activities to be made mandatory for the teams henceforth.
“I wonder in the future if we should not have some form of obligation to allocate a part of our time, a part of our resources, of our facilities to a greater cause, to a different cause, other than Formula 1. Frankly, if we are not forced to do it, I’m afraid that simply it will be extremely marginal or occasional.”
Formula 1 an inspiration to many this season
Formula 1 has always been labeled a rich man’s sport, but this season showed the ‘human’ side of the sport beautifully. And as rightly pointed out by Abiteboul, F1 has everything that one would require to make an impact on the world at large. He called the efforts of the teams “one of the positives of the crisis”.
“The fact that we all had some time available and facilities and capacity available to do something else than what we normally do, has shown what actually we are capable of doing. It’s great because I guess the problem – the good thing and the bad thing about Formula 1 – is that we’ve got amazing facilities, people, skills, you name it.”
“But we are all focused on what we need to do best which is building a fast car, and anything else that we do would be detrimental to our competitiveness. But on this very particular occasion, when the world stopped, we could do something else and advertise, basically, what we are capable of doing.”
