Mercedes, Albert Park, Melbourne, 2020

Mercedes request cancellation of Australian Grand Prix

2020 Australian Grand Prix

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Mercedes has written to Formula 1 and the FIA requesting the cancellation of the Australian Grand Prix.

The team issued the following statement:

The Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team has today sent a letter to the FIA and F1 requesting the cancellation of the 2020 Australian Grand Prix.

We share the disappointment of the sport’s fans that this race cannot go ahead as planned. However, the physical and mental health and wellbeing of our team members and of the wider F1 community are our absolute priority.

In light of the force majeure events we are experiencing with regards to the Coronavirus pandemic, we no longer feel the safety of our employees can be guaranteed if we continue to take part in the event.

We empathise strongly with the worsening situation in Europe, most especially in Italy, and furthermore we do not feel it would be right to participate in an event where fellow competitors such as McLaren are unable to do so through circumstances beyond their control.

Our team will therefore begin pack-up preparations at the circuit this morning.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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33 comments on “Mercedes request cancellation of Australian Grand Prix”

  1. Hats off to them… Health first as always…

    1. Unbelievable. Bubble world. Another chapter after 9/11, facebook, metoo, trump, musk, brexit, greta, and other moments where the world showed everyone just how nasty, naive, ill informed, gullible, egotistic and backwards society and in particular western society has become.

      1. @peartree What?

        People are dying, but okay.

        1. @justrhysism judging by his tendency to troll people here, he seems to have decided that this sort of behaviour is the way to provoke a large reaction to rile people up – he’d been criticising people for not doing enough only a day or two ago, only to go to the opposite extreme now.

      2. Tell that to people who died as a direct result of the virus.

        As a percentage of the population they are low but the virus spreads really fast if you don’t contain it. Italy has a mortality rate of 5% and tbousands of cases – in just a few weeks.

        1. 5% of known infected, to make it clear.

          And 1000 people have directly died in Italy due to the virus and its only been a few weeks.

        2. Mortality rate in Italy might go much higher, just saw the news stating govt. has told health workers to concentrate on younger and low risk people with old/high risk patients being not given as much attention. Deaths have already nearly doubled in Italy in last 24hrs or so. Its not a good sign.

      3. Go back to sleep Grandpa.

        1. Yeah that’s the kind of comment that makes you embarrassed to be human and wish COVID-19 the best of luck.

          1. How else to reply to an all-issue-encapsulating rant. Best to assume it’s an otherwise thoughtful person who needs a Snickers.

      4. Said it before and will say it again, usual @peartree nonsense.

      5. @justrhysism @gongtong @didaho and the old same anon. It might take you a few months to a few years to maybe eternity or never to understand just how disproportionate the reaction to this issue has been. Anon I was criticizing the carelessness, criticizing people for disregarding the severity of a virus that is as dangerous as the influenza, it needs attention, just not this much.
        WHO guidelines should be the standard anon.
        The fearmongering comes from the challenges WHO has in relaying information to the media and the public who do not understand a thing about the subject matter.
        Finally death rates are not 5% and infection rates are also not what you are seeing in data are statistical “quirks”, data gathering is difficult.
        This virus in specific is a sliver of the number of infections and deaths in this flu season, the vast majority of those tested are sick just not with the new virus. US ~20000 deaths to the flu, 20000000 infected(nbcnews). In the UK up to 20% of the pop might contract the flu(bbcnews) that is ~ 13000000. Unfortunately as is with similar virus the other coronavirus, a subset of society is vulnerable.

        1. @peartree The issue is not so much the death rate, but the speed in which it spreads (exponentially) which overwhelmed underfunded health systems resulting in people dying because they’re unable to be treated. Either from the disease directly, or from other normally treatable but deadly issues if left untreated (strokes, heart attacks etc).

          Ironically, if societies act fast and self isolate; then virus won’t spread and it’s a storm in a teacup. If it’s allowed to spread… well you get what’s happening in Italy right now.

          1. @justrhysism I agree, less panic would help.
            Rather look dumb than be a pillock like you @f1osaurus

          2. F1oSaurus (@)
            19th March 2020, 20:08

            @peartree Lol, you really are the saddest ostrich ever. To dumb to even understand how dumb you are.

            Maybe you should go to Italy and explain to them how they are just panicking. ROFLCOPTER

      6. F1oSaurus (@)
        15th March 2020, 12:35

        @peartree Lol you really love making yourself look utterly dumb.

        1. @f1osaurus it’s times like these when we should be thankful there’s no delete or edit button.

          @peartree ”s nonsense is archived forever. Including two contradictory posts in one thread.

          1. F1oSaurus (@)
            20th March 2020, 17:46

            @gongtong I actually think @peartree is proud of always saying the opposite of what makes sense. It’s like he feels smart by saying something incredibly dumb, because no one thought of saying something that dumb. Which makes sense in some sad way.

          2. @gongtong @f1osaurus read Rhys comment, he agrees with me. I don’t know Rhys, unlike you 2, but he is intelligent enough to have a nice, polite converstation with. To debate, put some facts on the table, unlike you, you are childish instead. Trolls at least are funny. You 2 buddies, I figure you are just kids, and that is okay, it is normal. One day you might become inteligent enough to understand complex concepts. So you can have a voice of your own. I sign my name on every comment, no anon posts, and I can only speak for myself, do you?
            No arguments, no insight, no opinion, nothing.
            No character.
            I’ll never regret or refrain from any comment I make, why? Because I wrote a valid argument for it. (Check the meaning of argument.)

          3. F1oSaurus (@)
            24th March 2020, 19:13

            @peartree He doesn’t agree with you. Yet again you make one of the dumbest statements and then pretend you actually said something clever.

            Your stupidity is NOT clever!

  2. This has been one of the most exciting GP’s for years and we’re not even in FP1 yet!

    1. Seriously has there ever been something like this happen before were so many world wide events get canceled?

      1. @carlosmedrano Maybe, but I’m not thoroughly aware. The Swine Influenza-epidemic ten years back definitely didn’t lead to cancellation or postponement of events, F1 or any other, sports, and non-sports.

      2. @carlosmedrano – I think we have to go back to the late 1930s, when both the Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics scheduled for 1940 were called off due to World War II, for the closest parallel.

        Both these games were meant to take place in 1940 in Japan. But seeing as WWII was already underway by 1937 in the Eastern Theater, in 1938 the Summer Olympics were relocated to Helsinki, and by 1939 the Winter Olympics were relocated to Germany (oh the irony, this was just months before WWII started in the Western Theater).

        Apart from that example, something of this nature has only been incredibly popular in fiction, with numerous books and movies covering either similar diseases (e.g. the movie Contagion) or the ever popular zombie apocalypses (e.g. the book+movie World War Z to name just one).

        In real life, the advent of rapid and accessible international travel has only been a feature for the last 5-7 decades, during which period the eventuality of airbone infections have only come to light in the last 2 or so decades (SARS, swine flu, corona virus, etc.).

        So yeah, this is a first-of-its-kind event that’s occurring. Well, thank heavens it’s not zombies.

        1. I’d rather it were Zombies. We know to smash their brains in with a shovel to fix it.

  3. McLaren and Mercedes being better stewards of the sport than the ones who ought to be.

    1. Well said

      1. Both of them will survive this outbreak and they know it.

  4. Good decision by mercedes, they really had nothing to lose performance wise and thought about safety first.

  5. It’s a pity that Teams and not the governing body had to be the ones that showed leadership.

    This is not going to play out well. The teams were in essence forced to place their people at risk by putting them in planes, hotels and generally in riskier areas than many probably would have preferred all because Liberty/FIA/promoters are so spineless.

    I expect legal teams will be smiling at the potential of getting their share of big Payouts.

    I exp

    1. No races no money incoming so no price money….

  6. Again Mercedes show themself to be the leaders. Good job.

    1. You are kidding, right? This was really cynical PR exercise from Mercedes, everyone had known for several hours that the race is not going to happen and it was McLaren who actually pulled the trigger. Mercedes had been insisting on racing until the call from Daimler came.

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