Mattia Binotto on Coronavirus: "We need to protect our employees"

F1 News

2 March 2020 at 08:40

Coronavirus is really starting to impact everyday life and even more in Formula 1 where the teams are due to be flying all over the world for the season. Mattia Binotto has revealed that some of Ferrari's personnel were unable to fly out to testing and he is unsure what will happen for the rest of the season.  

"[Getting] to testing has been difficult," Binotto told Motorsport.com. "Some of our engineers going there have remained home so instead of taking the risk to be there and eventually staying there for a few days or many days, they stayed home.

"I think that what we will need is simply to have assurance before leaving. I don't think we can discover when [we are there] what can be or what will be the situation.

"So if there are any medical screenings, we need to know about them. You need to know exactly what's about. We need to understand what are the consequences in case of any problem?

"Obviously we need to protect our employees. We have got collective and individual responsibility towards them. And it's important, really, to make sure that before leaving, the picture, whatever is the scenario, is known and clear."

There has been a big outbreak of the virus in northern Italy and it is unsure if the Ferrari and AlphaTauri teams will be able to leave the country to go racing.