Why F1 can't waste a lap in the post-coronavirus new era

This week's Autosport magazine is dedicated to the many non-championship Formula 1 races that regularly took place alongside the world championship during its first quarter of a century. These events varied in terms of their prestige and nature - some were smaller, club-style sprints, while others were proper grand prix races.

But while non-championship races have long since left the schedules for F1 teams, the series did recently consider the possibility of adding extra point-less events to the calendar as a way of experimenting with weekend formats.

Back in spring 2017, when Liberty Media's tenure as F1's owner had barely begun, newly installed F1 sporting boss Ross Brawn discussed the idea of adding non-championship races. But there was a catch - as there always is - with costs.

"It might be rather optimistic," Brawn told Reuters during that year's pre-season testing at Barcelona. "But you can imagine if we had a non-championship race there'd be a lot more capacity to look at different formats and approaches and see if the fans take to it with much less risk or exposure than we would if we were doing something in the championship.

"It needs to be commercially viable, of course, and that's the challenge. Again, it couldn't just be 'pick ideas out of a hat'. It needs to be properly thought through, but may be an opportunity."

The idea hasn't really come back into the news agenda since, but it's worth considering if non-points-paying events would work in 2020 - particularly as the coronavirus pandemic has already caused much disruption to the sporting schedule.

As ever, we must be careful to consider the scale of human tragedy that COVID-19 has already wreaked in a few months, but we can still quickly arrive at an answer: non-championship events surely aren't going to be happening anytime soon. For a start, the cost issue hasn't gone away - extra events even in normal times add requirements for the teams.

If events can be run behind closed doors, then the money generated from TV deals will be crucial to boosting F1's own income and generating the prize fund that is shared to the teams

Then there are the regulations to consider - if a non-championship race is added in mid-way through the season, it would need to be clarified if the power unit parts, for example, would count towards each driver's allocation for the whole campaign.

But the more pressing issue for F1's teams in the current crisis concerns the economic shock expected to follow the coronavirus lockdowns, and the lost income from cancelled races. In short, for every race under the 22 that were set to take place in 2020 - and a completely lost season sadly can't be fully ruled out yet - the teams will lose out in terms of the variable fees that help form F1's prize pot.

F1's broadcasters and sponsors will likely be set for refunds based on a lower number of races taking place, and Chase Carey's "15-18" events prediction is on the optimistic side given the championship's globetrotting nature. Team sponsors will likely be asking for the same sort of deal.

The fewer races 2020 has, the smaller the prize fund passed onto the teams (aside from the Bernie Ecclestone-negotiated fixed fees paid to Ferrari for its long-standing in the championship, the constructors' championship bonuses that go to Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren, and additional bonuses for Mercedes, Red Bull and Williams).

Essentially, every time the 2020 F1 cars hit the track (again, if they do) they must be racing for points so a longer season can eventually be declared.

While rightly acknowledging that F1's resumption can only take place when it is safe and acceptable to do so, Williams' deputy team principal Claire Williams highlighted how crucial getting races going this season will be for the squads when it comes to their business health.

"It's an incredibly tough environment that F1 finds itself in right now," Williams told Sky Sports News. "We have spent so much time locked into meetings, the team principals together with the FIA and F1, over the past four weeks to ensure we do absolutely everything we need to do to make sure all of us come out of this at the end of this year unscathed.

"Clearly a big part of that is about when we are able to go racing again, particularly for a team like ours. We're one of the true independents left, we don't have the backing that the majority of our competitors have up and down the grid. For us, going racing is absolutely critical this year. But as I said, it has to be when it's safe to do so.

"We just hope that we can get back to the race track this year, go racing, and really for us, we can take it from there."

If events can be run behind closed doors - which is being discussed as a way of working with the likely social limits that are expected to follow the lockdowns - then the money generated from TV deals will be crucial to boosting F1's own income. This in turn is used to generate the prize fund that is shared to the teams.

Even the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, which initially seemed to be unlikely without spectators, has now said it is considering this option.

This suggests there is some welcome give-and-take going on between the various parties - co-operation will be crucial in so many places in the coming weeks and months.

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So, no, non-championship races are not going to be a part of F1 anytime soon. Except, they sort of already are.

The rise of motorsport Esports has been widely covered since the Australian GP was aborted and high-profile online events have attracted real-world racing stars to compete against established sim drivers.

Last weekend, Charles Leclerc revived his tactic of robustly bumping past Alex Albon to win the Virtual Chinese Grand Prix and deny the Red Bull driver a first virtual triumph in that series.

Assuming 'normality' resumes in the future, then non-championship events could still be used to trial new formats and ideas as Brawn envisaged a few years ago

It brought back memories of Leclerc's somewhat unsubtle move in Abu Dhabi at the end of the final Formula 2 race of the 2017 season that he had dominated for Prema Racing (stopping Albon taking a first category win in what had been a disrupted rookie campaign with ART Grand Prix).

But it also again showed how F1 can, loosely speaking, add events without adding significant real-world costs. Plus, finance is a major barrier to grassroots motorsports participation, so Esports should be encouraged as a way of attracting more young fans.

But the idea of adding non-championship events to F1's schedule shouldn't be completely abandoned. Assuming, as we all hope it will, 'normality' resumes in the future, then the concept could still be used to trial new formats and ideas as Brawn envisaged a few years ago. After all, double-headers, shorter events - maybe even reversed tracks - are all genuine possibilities for F1's rearranged 2020 calendar.

F1 might be well served to continue such trends under the non-championship banner in the years to come. The additional costs would still have to be addressed, but such an approach would surely end debate around trying new ideas (reverse grids, for example) simply because they haven't traditionally been tried before.