F1 presents teams with provisional calendar for 2021

Realistic calendar

Formula 1 director Chase Carey has already announced that he would like to return to the original calendar planned for 2020 for the 2021 calendar, but the team bosses prefer a realistic calendar. "I know it's hard to predict the future with what's going on," said Racing Point team boss Otmar Szafnauer at Motorsport.com. "I don't think we can predict a month from now. I would rather have a realistic one than an optimistic one, so we can plan. But I just don't know what realistic means."

So Szafnauer thinks there will be discussions about that. "I will ask the question, 'In your mind, what do you think the probability or the likelihood is of us actually having this as a calendar? Is the probability low? Do we not also have a back-up?' So we can plan better.”

Maintain positivity

McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl is also curious about the draft calendar but hopes that Formula 1 can return to a normal schedule next year. "It was a challenging year this year, something we have never experienced before. And I still think that F1 together with us handled this quite well because we thought in April or May that we hopefully have a season with up to 17 races this year. And I have a lot of trust that F1 will do the right thing also for next year.”

But Seidl also sees the many uncertainties that are still there for next year. "Of course the situation is quite dynamic. At the same time, I think it's also important to keep some positivity up, and hopefully, we can then have a more normal race calendar again next year."