F1: Monza hoping for 80pc capacity, Zandvoort 100k

(GMM) Monza is hoping to welcome a crowd of up to 80 percent capacity to September’s Italian GP.

As the peak of the pandemic begins to recede, major sports events are grappling with ways to fill up the grandstands once again and end the damaging ‘ghost race’ phenomenon.

The solution under consideration for the Italian GP is separate grandstands and sections for both vaccinated and unvaccinated spectators.

“What we would like to do in Monza for Formula 1 – pandemic situation permitting – is to set up no-covid stands for vaccinated people,” said Angelo Sticchi Damiani, president of Italy’s automobile club Aci.

“And then there would be the other stands with social distancing for people who are tested with 50 percent capacity,” he added.

“While we cannot establish how many people will be vaccinated by 10-11 September, we hope it is many,” Sticchi Damiani continued.

“We certainly cannot hope to reach the 100,000 people we got in 2019, but we hope to fill up the circuit to 70-80 percent.”

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Dutch Grand Prix sporting director Jan Lammers is optimistic that a capacity crowd of 100k could be welcomed to Zandvoort in September.

Lammers is hopeful of hitting that figure in 2021, with tickets for the 2020 race remaining valid, but acknowledged that the 1.5 meter social distancing rule would need to be dropped by then to make it viable.

“It’s going in a positive direction very quickly, but that in itself is not so strange,” Lammers told the Dutch edition of Motorsport.com.

“Everyone knows now how to act with the virus around. And then you have the people who’ve already had corona and those who have already been vaccinated.

“If you take all of those things together, you already have a certain amount of spectators who are safe from getting the virus from someone else anyway.

“We don’t have a clear idea of how big those numbers are at the moment, but it’s looking good and that’s nice.”