The organizers of the world championship have announced the cancellation of the Chinese Grand Prix for the 2023 season due to Covid-19.
The Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix, which was scheduled to take place on April 16, 2023 in Shanghai, is canceled due to “current difficulties presented by the Covid-19 situation” in the country, world championship organizers announced on Friday. in a press release.
Formula 1 has not come since 2019 to China, where restrictions are still drastic to fight the pandemic. “Alternative options” are being studied by F1 to replace the event and maintain a calendar of 24 races, which would be a record.
A season with 23 Grands Prix
If F1 does not replace the event, a 23-race season (including the first in Bahrain on March 5) would still be a record – the current one is 22 Grands Prix.
A week after a BBC article announcing this cancellation, F1, which had denied, finally confirmed, after a new “dialogue with the promoter and the competent authorities”. The move comes after a wave of angry protests in China against health restrictions and for more freedoms last weekend. And this despite, this week, signs of a possible reduction, by the authorities, of their strict “zero Covid” policy.
According to the BBC, F1 staff would not have been exempted from quarantine requirements in the event of Covid-19 infection, making it very risky for teams to come to the country in a very tight schedule. The absence of China, for the fourth consecutive season since the start of the pandemic, leaves a gap between the Australian Grand Prix on April 2 and that in Azerbaijan on April 30.
To hope to stay at 24 races, F1 can count on a reservoir of contenders, as F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali explained to AFP at the end of October, on the sidelines of the Mexican Grand Prix: “There are a lot of other countries that would like to host a Grand Prix. Tomorrow morning, we could sign with seven or eight other countries in addition”.
