Hamilton chases F1 record

SEVEN months after it last competed in earnest, the Formula One circus will push a post-lockdown reset button to open the 2020 season in Austria on Sunday.

The event at Spielberg is being held on its original calendar date, but is not the once-anticipated 11th round of the championship, but the first — a season-opener delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.

More than three months after the Australian Grand Prix was abandoned on the eve of opening practice in Melbourne, the race in the Styrian Alps will be run behind closed doors, without fans, sponsors’ agents and guests and only a handful of reporters restricted to the media centre.

The usual high-rise motor homes will be replaced by tents and awnings, while the teams — cut to 80 members and all in protective gear — will operate in sanitised “bubbles within bubbles” in a paddock bereft of human contact.

For all involved, who will be tested four days before the event and five days later, it will be a unique experience.

Yet, despite all the change and the surreal atmosphere, it is expected that the action, when it begins, will deliver the same likely story.

Lewis Hamilton, powered by the all-conquering Mercedes, goes in search of a seventh drivers’ title to equal the record of Michael Schumacher.

Even during lockdown, drivers’ moves for next year took place, Ferrari announcing the release of four-time champion Sebastian Vettel, to be succeeded by Carlos Sainz of McLaren and Daniel Ricciardo signing to leave Renault and be the Spaniard’s replacement at the cash-starved outfit so badly hit by the pandemic.

Those 2021 moves will not affect this year’s line-ups, but may affect relationships between departing drivers and teams anxious not to allow unique operational and performance intelligence to leave with them.