Hamilton fears British GP crowd move is premature
(Reuters) - Seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton said yesterday Formula One could be moving too fast with the decision to allow a 140,000-capacity crowd at his home British Grand Prix next month.
The sport announced that hundreds of thousands of fans could attend the July 1618 grand prix at Silverstone in a significant easing of COVID-19 restrictions.
That would be the biggest crowd at a British sporting event since the pandemic triggered a national lockdown in March last year.
The last pre-pandemic race held at the circuit with spectators in 2019 saw a three-day attendance of 351,000 and 141,000 on Sunday. The circuit hosted two races last year, both without a crowd.
“I’m kind of split,” Mercedes driver Hamilton told reporters ahead of the Styrian Grand Prix at Austria’s Red Bull Ring.
“I can’t tell you how excited I am to see people and the British crowd, because it is the best crowd of the whole year.
“Obviously, I watch the news so I hear about the (COVID-19) cases going up massively in the UK and so on that side I worry for people, naturally.”
“It feels a bit premature to me,” he added.
Informed that everyone attending would have to be vaccinated, or test negative for the virus, Hamilton, who is outspoken on social issues, said that was a good thing but it did not change his opinion.
“I like to err on the side of caution and slowly build up rather than full pelt and using our British fans as a test,” he said.
Silverstone, a home GP for the majority
of teams, joins Wimbledon tennis, golf’s British Open and the Euro 2020 semifinals and final at Wembley in the British government’s Event Research Programme (ERP).
DATA DRIVEN
The circuit’s managing director Stuart Pringle told Reuters the race would end about nine hours before for all restrictions were due to be lifted anyway, and the ERP programme was data driven.
“The reasons why we are the largest attendance of any sporting event is because we are the last one of the Events Research Programme which has been in operation now for some months,” he added. He said the crowd would not have been sanctioned if the data indicated it was unsafe.
“I’m very grateful to Lewis for his concern about our fans but he’s probably not close to the data of the Events Research Programme,” added Pringle.
Other British drivers Lando Norris of McLaren and Williams’ George Russell were effusive.