Gerard Saillant, the president of the FIA’s medical commission, is confident that any outbreak of coronavirus in the paddock at a Formula 1 race could be managed without the need to cancel any races.
The Australian Grand Prix was postponed on the eve of the event back in March following some mechanics from the McLaren F1 Team testing positive for COVID-19, and subsequently the opening ten races of the original schedule have either been cancelled, postponed or delayed.
Should someone within the paddock test positive for the virus in the upcoming events, whether it is a marshal, driver or anyone else, Saillant believes it can be handled differently now to how it was in Australia, and he does not foresee any problems that cannot be managed and contained.
“I think the situation is quite different between Melbourne and Austria now,” Saillant is quoted as saying by Crash.net. “The knowledge of the virus is quite different.
“It is possible to prevent and to anticipate a lot of things. If we have one positive case, or maybe even 10, it is possible to manage perfectly with a special pathway for the positive case.
“Medically speaking, it is not a problem and whether it is a marshal or [Lewis] Hamilton, it is the same, medically speaking. But in terms of the sporting or media consequence it is quite different.
“We have to try to anticipate that, to know where the red line is, beyond which, it is impossible to continue. But I think it is not a problem for us now.”
