Formula 1 bosses are adamant no world championship grand prix will go ahead on the calendar if one or more teams are denied entry to a country in response to the coronavirus.
MotoGP cancelled its opening two rounds, in part a response to a stance by officials in Qatar that staff and riders from Italian teams would have to be quarantined for 14 days.
There had been conjecture that members of the Ferrari and AlphaTauri teams travelling from Italy, which has become a European hotbed for the virus, could face similar issues on the early F1 calendar or else be barred altogether. But F1 managing director of motorsport Ross Brawn told Reuters: “If a team is prevented from entering a country, we can’t have a race. Not a Formula 1 world championship race, anyway, because that would be unfair.
“Obviously if a team makes its own choice not to go to a race, that’s their decision. But where a team is prevented from going to a race because of a decision of the country then it’s difficult to have a fair competition.”
That could pave the way for some races on the calendar to go ahead as scheduled but then not count towards the constructors and drivers’ standings.
But Brawn said the approach of the sport was to avoid making further race changes on the calendar after the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, scheduled for April 19, was postponed.
“It’s a very serious situation so I don’t want to underplay it,” he said. “But we’re trying to have races. We’ve got to do them in a responsible way.
“We’re minimising the number of people in the paddock, we’re asking the teams to send a minimum number of people they need to a race.”
