One less race, one more headache

The cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix has been met with mixed feelings within the F1 community: some teams felt they were better prepared than others and therefore hoped to have an advantage in the early races, so they are therefore disappointed at the cancellation, while others are glad of some extra development time.

However, with the Sakhir circuit test session due to have taken place next week, the cancellation has provided the team logistics and travel departments a few headaches. “We have never had to deal with this scenario before,” said Scuderia Toro Rosso team manager, Gianfranco Fantuzzi. “Of course, to keep things in perspective, our difficulties are very small when compared to those affecting everyone in Bahrain right now, but they still need to be dealt with. Hotels, flights, rental cars and the hire charges for circuit equipment were all paid in advance and we are trying to recover as much of these costs as possible, although having only started this process yesterday, it’s too early to say how much we will get back. I think the costs will fall into several categories: some we will recuperate completely, others partially, some not at all, with others being deferred to the next time there is a Bahrain GP.”

One other key area is the sea freight. “All teams send a lot of equipment this way and in the case of Bahrain, it will just have to be freighted back to us, because a completely different freighting was used for the second race in Melbourne,” continued Fantuzzi. “Fortunately, the cost of air-freighting the actual race cars and the bulk of the technical equipment should be recovered, as this is done in conjunction with FOM, assuming they can recover the cost of the flights, from Munich to Bahrain and back again. Our plans for tackling the Australian GP, which now becomes the first race, remain largely unchanged as it was always planned for the team and equipment to return to Faenza from Sakhir.”

But what of plans to reschedule the Bahrain Grand Prix? “That would be very complex,” admitted Fantuzzi. “The sea freight schedule is very tight, with the equipment moving from one race to another and then another, with very little flexibility in this area. So putting the race back on the calendar later in the year would be very difficult, while replacing it with another event in Europe, to restore the calendar to 20 Grands Prix, would be more straightforward.”