Seidl: Pandemic is final wake-up call to fix unhealthy F1

Andreas Seidl

Echoing his boss Zak Brown, the coronavirus pandemic should be the “final wake-up call" for an “unhealthy" Formula 1 championship to make big changes, said McLaren Team Principal Andreas Seidl ahead of today's F1 meeting

“I think the crisis we’re in now is the final wake-up call that a sport which was unhealthy before and not sustainable has now reached a point where we need big changes and drastic changes as well," said Seidl.

“For us the most important thing is we simply make the next big step on the budget cap.

“We think it’s absolutely important now with all the financial losses we will face this year – the magnitude of it still being unknown because so far we don’t actually know when we can go back racing – I think it’s important to first of all combine with all the other measures like freezing the cars and so on to survive this year.

“And then it’s also important for our shareholders to show them that the losses you make this year we can somehow compensate them over the next few years."

“There is a big risk we could lose teams through this crisis," he said. “Again so far we don’t know what the income will be this year, we don’t know when we get back to racing again, of course we all hope we can do as many race as possible.

“It’s important now to make big decisions and make another big step in terms of the level of the budget cap for the future, which doesn’t help us for this year, for this year we need other short-term measures like freezing the cars etc to save costs. “But at least then it gives an outlook to everyone taking part in Formula 1 that the sport will be a lot more sustainable and healthy in the future for the teams to survive this crisis."