Cancel the Formula season yes, but not for Bernie’s rationale…

Ex F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone thinks the season should now be cancelled.

His explained his rationale to the BBC; “We should stop the championship this year and start again next year, hopefully, because I can’t see it’s going to be possible to get the right amount of races in that count for a championship.”

Bernie’s rationale is at present nonsensical. Under current regulations an F1 season requires 8 races to be completed to count as a championship. This means so long as we are all not confined to our homes until the Italian GP in September, 8 races should be perfectly possible to schedule. 

Given the calendar could be extended by agreement, races could be held through December and even into January.

If we exit the Piranha club bubble mentality – where the real world exists – and try to apply some common sense; there may be a very simple and obvious reason why the F1 season should be cancelled.

The psychological damage CV-19 will have on much of the population will see many less F1 and sports fans wanting to go and mix with tens and hundreds of thousand of others. Further, the economic devastation the current world [except Sweden] isolation policy will wreak is of truly Armageddon proportions.

Circuits do not generate their cash from advance ticket sales in just 15 weeks prior to their F1 event. And the notion everyone will come out of lockdown desperate to go to sporting events is dubious.

Further, people are taking big hits on income. Is an F1 race really where they’ll be budgeting their spend in a couple of months?

The global crisis, the lack of perspective from governments worldwide is beyond belief. The debt being racked up by country after country will see public spending curtailed by a spectacular amount for decades. It could be argued the number of deaths from incremental poverty and lack of publically funded health care is way beyond the cost now being spent to keep everyone locked up at home.

So, Bernie may well be right – but for the wrong reasons. The world will never be the same again the longer billions of people are locked up at home. Going to an F1 race will be well down the order of spending priorities.

Yes, life is precious. Particularly when it’s one of our own. But what is the cost of a life? Should a government spend trillions to save 10,000 lives? 

England regularly sees 17,000 deaths per year from the flu. Will the English population in hindsight see another 10-15 years of austerity for government spending a price worth paying for the same death toll as a year’s worth of influenza?

And yes, the odds on F1 racing – actual not virtual – this year have to be less than 50%.