HOW NATIONAL MOTORSPORT WILL CONTINUE WITH CORONAVIRUS RESTRICTIONS
Motorsport UK has revealed a blueprint to resume competition.
Motorsport will return this year, but the landscape will be vastly different. Restrictions put in place by the government will mean that the process of using the stages or the race tracks will be changed greatly, and some of the shifts that have been introduced are likely to have a long-lasting impact on how competitors, volunteers and fans go about consuming motorsport.
Here, we look at the effects the new rules will have in the service parks and paddocks of the UK. The times might well be very different, but at least motorsport will emerge again. So long as these rules are observed, the red light will blink off once more.
Motorsport UK’S guidance for racing’s resumption after the coronavirus related suspension was received positively by national racing clubs, who consider its stricter health protection measures achievable for their race meetings.
The British Automobile Racing Club Group boss Ben Taylor tells Motorsport News: “We’re very comfortable with it and think it’s a good place to start. The important thing was that Motorsport UK has put together a set of guidelines that serve as a protection for people operating at race meetings, but haven’t made such onerous and sweeping regulations that make it impossible or financially unviable for us to get up and running. There’s a great deal of common sense in there and there’s no areas where we think it’s unrealistic.”
Many clubs and other stakeholders fed into the plans’ development indeed, and Motorsport UK received praise for leading the process well.
The Scottish Motor Racing Club’s business development manager Rory Bryant tells MN: “It’s a really good piece of work done by Motorsport UK and it’s going to be very helpful when we are ready to resume. Any sort of resumption of the sport, especially for a race meeting, is never going to be completely straightforward but the guidance provided makes it as practical as possible.”
The British Racing and Sports Car Club chairman Peter Daly believes furthermore that the planned use of electronic methods will also have longer-lasting benefits. “All our daily businesses, we already operate like that,” he notes to MN. “There are people out there who spend many thousands of pounds buying a holiday and they do that on the internet by the click of a button. So motorsport, why not do it at the click of a mouse and it will speed up the whole process of getting people racing?”
Clubs accept however that much of the practical impact on meetings from the stricter health considerations is currently unknown and will only be learned from practice, both from the initial post-lockdown race events and from the recently-recommenced test days. Therefore additional and more specific instruction is expected to follow these initial guidelines.
“If anybody tells you they know exactly what it’ll look like [at race meetings] I think they’re maybe taking a flyer on that,” adds Taylor. “We probably won’t know until we get up and running and then we’ll learn lots of lessons and have to think on the hoof.”
Clubs currently are doing what they can to prepare for racing’s resumption, such as accessing PPE and signage, assessing their procedures and protocols for the new safety requirements as well as working with venues. They report that plenty of competitors are ready to go too, and many race calendars are beginning to be published.
Clubs recognise though that, even with the guidelines in place, what happens next still largely depends on government. “It’s all completely dependent on what guidance the government issues next,” notes Bryant. “That could be that you’re not allowed gatherings of more than 10 people in which case running a race meeting probably is not going to be practical, but it could be that gatherings of more than 500 aren’t allowed in which case there’s probably things that can be done to run a race meeting.
“And there’s the complication in the UK of there possibly being four different approaches and timelines [across the four nations].”
Daly adds: “Another concern
I have is trying to get clarity from the government on travel quarantines, [this] will have a knock-on effect at both club and national level and international level because we do have a number of drivers who may be residing abroad.”