The Formula E season has managed to advance within the established deadlines that the organization defined after the complications that were experienced at the beginning of the year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and that forced, among other changes, to move the opening date that was contemplated for Santiago de Chile.
They had to adapt to the circumstances and what was happening in each country. This is how the new calendar established that the Santiago E-Prix would now be held on June 5 and 6 at Parque O’Higgins. That is, unless new problems arise due to the pandemic that prevent the competition from taking place.
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The current situation in the country is indeed very complex and there is little security that can be given to the organization regarding what will happen during May and June. And one of the problems is precisely due to the closing of borders, which makes it difficult for both boats and participating teams to arrive. In addition, considering the logistics that the race must do to travel from Europe to Chile, doubts about the Santiago date become reasonable.
It is urgent to make the decision
That is why a decision must be made soon and from the Formula Organization they recognized that the deadline is already defined and will be before dates 5 and 6 are disputed in Spain: “The announcement is scheduled to be made next week in Valencia. Hopefully it will be a positive resolution,” said the organization, according to the local newspaper La Tercera de Chile.
The successful anti-Covid protocol
Although the odds of making the date are not encouraging, in the Formula E organization they trust that they will be able to advance with the calendar, in fact, after the date disputed in Rome last weekend, Alberto Longo, co-founder and Deputy CEO of the FIA ABB Formula E, highlighted the protocol that developed the category to go to city centers despite the pandemic, which has been implemented in Chile and other countries for different events.
The preventive scheme that the electric car competition devised to present itself in August last year with six races in nine days in Berlin and which it then implemented in Valencia for pre-season tests, in Ad Diriyah last February opening the seventh season, was the the same that was implemented in the Italian capital, allowing the championship to progress almost normally.
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“Rome is a city that is always on our calendar, it is a flagship for us, they are always absolutely proud to have us here in this city, we are racing in absolutely extreme circumstances,” Longo told Formula E from the Cittadino dell Circuit ‘EUR that received dates 3 and 4.
Among the highlights of the anti-Covid protocol, which includes a kind of health bubble, Longo revealed the very low rate of positivity registered by the category through the strict controls it carries out at its events.
“To date in the different places where we have been, both in Berlin, last season, and in Valencia, in the pre-season test, then in Riyadh, and now here, we have carried out more than 27 thousand tests, with an incidence less than 0.0001% of positive cases.”
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Regarding the cases that have tested positive for Covid, Longo pointed out that “in this case there are three, four, five positive cases that we have had, which have been followed up completely, practically without symptoms of any kind, they entered full isolation and this definitely shows that our bubble works.”
The good results of the health scheme have even allowed different countries, including Chile, to have adopted the Formula E protocol for the organization of events.
“Their sports secretary told us another day that thanks to the Formula E protocol, they have used it to carry out other international events in Chile,” Longo said, adding that “and not only in Chile, in many other countries in the world they are using and to our system to hold events in the safest way possible.”
It should be noted that after the date in Rome, Formula E plans to run in two weeks at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit in Valencia before presenting in May in Monaco and Marrakech, and then traveling to Chile on the first weekend of June.
The other races
Regarding the rest of the rounds that are defined, the executive specified that “the calendar today, the truth is that obviously we have all the challenges that all international events have, we are seeing exactly how we can finish the races, but what we do commit ourselves, we did commit ourselves in their day, and we are quite sure that we will be able to continue doing those fifteen races that we initially announced.”
In any case, although the intention is to continue with what has been established.
Written by I Jhonattan González
