Racing Point explains its issues with F1 COVID-19 guidelnes ahead of the start of season

Racing Point explains its issues with F1 COVID-19 guidelines ahead of the start of the season; points the wastage of time in the process.

Racing Point has expressed its concerns over F1’s COVID-19 guidelines as the F1 team points out that will make mechanics waste time in garages this season.

These new protocols require teams to rethink the way they work in the garages, while at the same time respecting the social distancing of team members.

Racing Point was at the Silverstone last week to work before moving to Austria for the first Grand Prix of the season and team manager Andrew Green explains that it will be more difficult to keep to the schedule during a race weekend, precisely because of the new protocols.

“It’s very different and it will be a real challenge for the future. It changes the time needed to make changes to the car. It changes the time it takes to make changes to the car,” said Andrew Green, quoted by the F1 World Championship website.

“The work is taking longer and we have to try and manage that. We only have a certain amount of time on the track to work on the car.” he further said.

“When we are in a racing environment we have curfews in place, so now we have to look at how long it takes to change and modify parts on the car compared to what we would normally do.”

“We have to replan everything to make sure we do what we need to do during a race weekend without breaking curfew rules. Green added that he hopes the team will not need to change an engine during a race weekend.”

Also read: Honda introduces engine updates for Red Bull and Alpha Tauri

“I suspect that changing an engine now will take some time. We can only have certain crew members working on the car and racing at the same time, and that limits the speed at which you can make a power unit change.”

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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