Mar 13

Mar 13 F1 leaders: "Sadness and disappointment" at Australian Grand Prix cancellation

Formula 1 and Australian Grand Prix officials have addressed the media regarding the cancellation of the Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix.

F1 race director Michael Masi, Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC) CEO Andrew Westacott and chariman Paul Little, and F1 CEO Chase Carey held a joint press conference in the F1 paddock.

AGPC chairman Paul Little said “events over the last few days have been moving incredibly quickly, and the AGPC has been obviously reacting and responding to those issues.”

“To our race fans, I'd like to say we are terribly disappointed that the event can't go ahead. The reasons for that are well known and I'm sure there will be questions about that shortly, but from the AGPC point of view, we just want to say sorry to our fans, and the health and safety and welfare of teams and the community generally, has to take precedence, and it will and has. We look forward to, hopefully, being able to run this event at some later stage, but we'll just have to wait and see.”

F1 CEO Chase Carey said “first and foremost, I want to add our thoughts with those individuals that have been affected by this.”

“I mostly want to express our disappointment on behalf of the fans, this is a race that we always look forward to. We're sorry not to have it, but it has been a very fluid situation. I think we've made the right decisions, we've worked well with our partners. I think we're all disappointed not to have it but these are challenging times and I think we've made the decisions we've had to make.”

Press conference ready to go at #AusGP. External media have been brought into the circuit. Will start in 10 min and take questions afterwards #F1 pic.twitter.com/G9JGEFTaXh
— andrew rickert (@_rockrit) March 13, 2020

AGPC CEO Andrew Westacott said:

“On the fluidity referred to by Chase Carey and Paul Little; the Victorian Government is the partner, if not the sponsor of the AGPC, and as an entity of the Victorian Government we have worked extremely closely with the Department of Health and Human Services to take advice throughout the many weeks leading up to this event in relation to the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

“Melbourne, and Victoria, has a Chief Health Officer that feeds into a national body of Chief Health Officers, who feed into a committee, and all the way up to the National Security Committee chaired by the Prime Minister. We have taken guidance every step of the way from that Committee, and their input has been crucial, and this morning we had that additional advice that the event would be cancelled. That information has been had in parallel.

“It's important to note that Victoria had on Sunday last weekend, five days ago, hosted a massive event, the World T20 Women's final at the MCG, which hosted 86,000. So this is a fluid situation that emerges and changes on a day-to-day basis, and I say thank you very much to Formula One, the FIA, and the Department of Health of Human Services and the Chief Health Officer, for the work they've done in making sure that we've got up-to-date information all the way through.”