Coronavirus vs. motorsport

Firstly; motorsport is a sport, and sport is entertainment. And right now, entertainment is the least of the world’s problems.

However, I’m a motorsport writer, so there’s no point me talking about the global impacts of the current coronavirus pandemic — I’d just be joining part of a collective of people talking about something they don’t really know much about, so I’ll stick to talking about my home turf for the last ten years — motorsport, with a very touring car racing-focussed slant.

Just stay at home, stay safe, and that’ll give us the best chance of getting out of this quickly enough to be back as close to normal as possible, including our beloved motor racing.

I say ‘close to’— because the after-effects of this to everyday life will be profound; many companies won’t be there that were there before this all happened and the world shut down — and it’s very likely a number of the smaller motorsport series won’t be either, possibly a few of the larger ones too.

How this coronavirus has stopped racing so far

Staying at home has very quickly become normality, and that’s very strange to think about that given the UK, where I’m based, we’ve only technically been on ‘lockdown’ for less than two weeks.

The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus currently spreading throughout the world originated in China, in the large city of Wuhan — where I was in 2018 as it held a round of the WTCR — FIA World Touring Car Cup.

The city hosts an annual motorsport festival, which includes a round of the China Touring Car Championship, which raced at the city just in December 2019.

The lockdown measures in China very quickly hit the start of the Asian racing season, with the calendars almost designed around the coronavirus and an anticipated return to normality.

The China Touring Car Championship has put together a compromise calendar, which now aims to start their season at the end of May, with two back-to-back races at the Guangdong circuit just as the country itself starts to move out of its lockdown.

As the coronavirus made spread throughout the Asian region, one touring car series managed to get its short season in with little impact — and that was the TCR Malaysia championship, which features three rounds throughout January and February all held at the Sepang International Circuit.

The impact was relatively little, but a few of the Chinese entrants found themselves unable to continue past the first race, and the main entries were the Malaysian-based programmes of Engstler Motorsport, JAS Motorsport (as Brutal Fish Racing Team), Viper Niza Racing, and the South Korean team Solite Indigo Racing, getting its season with Josh Files and Kim Jin Soo in just before things really kicked off in South Korea.

The now WTCR-bound Engstler won the title in a tie-break with British driver Dan Lloyd, and that was the last TCR touring car race we’ve had this year.

Australia managed to fit in the opening round of the Supercars Championship at Adelaide in late February, before the second round at Albert Park in Melbourne, part of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship weekend and the inaugural TCR Asia Pacific Cup, turned out to be a disaster.

The race cancelled amidst controversy, with one of the McLaren F1 team’s engineers diagnosed with the COVID-19 disease at the circuit, and drivers reportedly leaving the country before the officials had even been able to confirm the event was no longer going to happen. In fact the decision to cancel the race came on Friday morning, when the first race of the supporting TCR Asia Pacific Cup was meant to be taking place, with 2007 V8 Supercars champion Garth Tander due to start from pole position ahead of his former Supercars rival Michael Caruso.

The BTCC — the pre-season launch

In the UK, the following week, the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) held its pre-season launch at the Silverstone International circuit.

The decision to carry on with the launch, and indeed also affirm that everything was still go for the start of the season on 28–29 March at Donington Park, seemed controversial in the circumstances.

Not through any fault of the BTCC — but the series, like most companies and industries in the UK, were just following the recommendations of the UK government on how to react to the pandemic.

I ran a poll on my Twitter account ahead of the launch, which I re-ran again just five days later — the results of which were distinctly different following a change of advice from the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

So, in this crisis, the government’s advice is clearly driving people’s thoughts and feelings, but the UK’s position at the time of the test was one of caution, not following the lockdown approaches seen at that point in China and Italy.

Businesses across the country were already asking its people to work from home where they could, while an almost silently presented pre-season launch took place at Silverstone, with the 29 cars entered for the championship taking part in a subdued test. There was a reduced presence from the teams themselves, as well as their PR, and with Motorsport News the only independent media news outlet present.

It was during the launch event itself that the UK’s motorsport authority (ASN), Motorsport UK, confirmed that all racing will be suspended until the end of May, effectively postponing the first three rounds of the BTCC. This has since been extended until the end of June, meaning now half the calendar needs to find new dates.

We’ll just do it all later (somehow)

As championships have now all confirmed at their opening rounds, if not, as above, almost half their season needs to be rescheduled, there’s an incredible implication to logistics that needs to be considered.

First, and let’s be clear, not all championships will get all their rounds in.

Some are at least saying they may end up dropping one or two rounds, whilst they still try to maintain a large enough calendar to make the championship financially viable, let alone viable to be called a ‘championship’ from a sporting perspective.

The WTCR — FIA World Touring Car Cup, has recognised due to the very restricted way its programme works (using sea freight to keep the costs down and effectively split into a European and Asian leg) that it won’t be able to add more events to its calendar, so the cancelled first two rounds of four races in Hungary and Germany will be replaced with additional races at its other events.

Other championships are unfortunately clearly in denial, as they expect to run a full programme in the last half of this year.

That day when the world’s chief medical officers appear at a media briefing, and say “It’s alright everyone, it’s gone now” (assuming that’s even this year), the scramble for available dates on the calendar will be frenetic to say the least.

The big boys will take up the spaces first, while smaller series will try to buddy up to get their championships on the bill, creating some pretty incredible race weekends as a result — with championships you’d never expect to see together, together.

In the US, this is already pencilled in, with an IndyCar and NASCAR Cup series race both scheduled to take place at the same time at Indianapolis on July 4.

The TCR Europe Touring Car Series has already postponed its season opener at Spa-Francorchamps, which was to run alongside the relatively new Creventic-run TCR Spa 500 event on May 1–3, and will now share the July 25–26 weekend with the prestigious Spa 24 Hours race run by SRO instead.

There will be many more of these interesting relationships, which will create some old fashioned “super racing weekends” that’ll be great for the fans at the track. Although a bit of a nightmare for the broadcasters.

It’s not just scheduling circuits that will be a problem. The majority of motorsport’s infrastructure is supported by freelance workers — all the way from race engineers and mechanics, to hospitality and PR.

Very few of these people work exclusively with one team or championship, and after finding themselves horrifically out of work during the lockdown, the positive will be that business could well be booming when the season starts, but there will be too many opportunities, and not enough race weekends as we head into clash central.

Some drivers will find themselves with a different race engineer every race weekend as they are committed elsewhere, and in fact some teams will probably find themselves with different drivers, as various professional drivers will no doubt find their carefully planned dual contract to race with X-brand in A-series and Y-brand in B-series, no longer works out.

I’m sorry, I don’t have the budget anymore…

Another impact will be the availability of drivers in the first place.

Many drivers bring the budget from their weekday businesses, and might find their priorities have very much changed as a result of the worst global crisis to hit the world financially, as well as medically, this century.

Those few weekends spending the business’ surplus profit popping over to Monza, Le Castellet, and the Nürburgring to nip around in an Audi racing car might be a level of escapism not looked upon to fondly by their employees, or former employees.

That’ll also filter down to the young hopefuls who are looking to work their way up the motorsport pyramid, which were previously dependent on sponsor support which will also be re-prioritising their expenditure for similar reasons.

The end result — in the best case scenario, we will no doubt see some series with fewer races, and smaller grids, all packed into the last part of the year.

For some series, the reduction in entry fees from the loss of both competitors and rounds will lead to the series at the very least postponing its whole season to next year, if not forcing it to close down entirely.

It’s going to be an extremely tough year for those in the motorsport business; but at the end of it all, manufacturers are going to want to sell cars, racing drivers are going to want to get back onto the track, and businesses are going to want to build themselves up again — it’ll be a painful period while motorsport emerges from this and it’ll take the best part of a year before things even seem slightly normal again, but it’ll get there.