Hamish McLachlan: Inside the shock cancellation of Australian Grand Prix 2020
The Australian Grand Prix was an hour away from being the last big sporting event in the world before coronavirus took hold. Until one phone call.
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Paul Little AO is the Chairman of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC). Andrew Westacott is the AGPC’s longest serving CEO.
In March, one day into a four-day event, after a year of planning with fans queued up ready to watch their heroes, they found themselves having to make a decision not contemplated before.
HM: It’s funny how things can be put into perspective — from what I can gather, everything was in such great shape going into this year’s Grand Prix that a tram strike was one of your biggest concerns … and then everything took a back seat to COVID-19.
AW: It changed very quickly Hame, that’s for sure. The first scenario we were dealing with was the impact from bushfires, and then there were the tram strikes, and our job is to always think of different contingencies that are going to impact fans, sales or the staging of the event. It might be rain levels, or construction and building related issues. At some stage, coronavirus came along, jokes amongst Melburnians and mates, but then it heated up. I started to take it very seriously when the Chinese Formula One Grand Prix was cancelled. From the start of February, we were starting to review lots of different scenario considerations from a health perspective.
PL: I think we were planning for COVID-19 in a far more serious way than most people realised. We weren’t planning for a pandemic, but we were planning for the fact that it was our responsibility to be able to handle a worst-case scenario over the four days of the event. We were building up our supplies of emergency equipment, and in our relationship with the health authorities we were establishing ‘what if’ type scenario planning, however, not for a minute did we think the event wasn’t going to happen until the final hour or so before it was cancelled.
HM: The Sunday night prior to the Grand Prix saw the Women’s T20 World Cup Cricket final played in front of an enormous crowd. It seemed a long bow from there to have a cancelled GP.
AW: It did, but because we’re an international sport, two of the key teams are Italian based, along with the tyre supplier, and Formula One being based in the UK, we were probably more aware of how the COVID-19 scenario was playing out in Europe. It was a completely different environment to the one we were seeing in Melbourne, as evidenced by the cricket that was played on the Sunday. There was a lot of dialogue that we had to have with Formula One through that time, to make sure that they were aware of the conditions here, because the lead times of freight arrivals and the decisions to actually depart and head to Australia for the Grand Prix, are made several weeks in advance at the very least.
PL: There were a series of buttons we were pushing along the way, but at no stage did we ever think there was the real likelihood of this event not going ahead. The Wednesday and the Thursday of the week of the event, things were being escalated by the hour. We thought that we had the situation in hand. We had the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) who were reporting to us consistently, they were happy with what they saw, we were in constant contact with Formula 1 Management and the F1 teams, and they were all positive about it, if not, maybe a bit edgy.
AW: The other thing that was happening a week before our event was the MotoGP season starting in Qatar. They had testing, and the Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP teams were testing in Qatar. MotoGP went back home to Italy, and Moto2 and Moto3 stayed in Qatar. Qatar then introduced quarantine restrictions, and 14-day exclusions. When the Grand Prix in Qatar happened, Moto2 and Moto3 raced, but Moto GP couldn’t get back into the country. That started to freak out the F1 crews — and it became a reality that COVID had the potential to stop GP’s. The Italians, the decision makers at Ferrari, AlphaTauri, Pirelli, the Alfa Romeo team from Switzerland, all started to become anxious and from the Qatar cancellation there was a level of anxiety centred around whether they could all get into Australia.
PL: The other thing that made us feel somewhat uncomfortable, was that Andrew and I were in London for a Formula One annual event for all promoters. We get an opportunity to understand what is on the radar screen from Formula One, and what’s likely to happen over the next few years. For me, it was an opportunity to meet a lot of the promoters from the other countries. This was the end of January. I went shopping one day to try and buy some face masks for my trip back, and London was completely sold out of face masks and hand sanitiser. You couldn’t get it anywhere. That was right at the end of January, so the world was getting very nervous. Australia had thought it was in reasonable shape, but that’s when I thought “OK, this might be much bigger than most of us think”.
HM: When was it that either of you felt — OK, this weekend might be in real jeopardy?
PL: It was probably a lot closer to the GP weekend than most people would understand. The wheels weren’t falling off leading in to the weekend, we were still cautiously confident.
HM: Until everything fell apart…
AW: They were on because we opened the gates on Thursday.
HM: And were close to opening on Friday...
AW: Exactly, we had track activity — Paul Stoddart’s Minardi two-seater raced around on track on Friday. The Europeans were coming out of an environment where people were dying in Italy, and Ferrari’s headquarters is just north of Bologna. That’s the epicentre of it. When they came out to Australia, they were on tenterhooks. When anyone had a sneeze or a sniffle, they went precautionary from a testing point of view.
HM: They were seemingly much more aware of the dangers than we were at the time — you could see they were apprehensive?
PL: We went for a walk down pit lane when the teams were unpacking on the Wednesday. Andrew was introducing me to people, but the very first person we met in pit lane was so nervous. The guy could hardly talk! I just thought, “how is this weekend going to work when a senior guy from Ferrari was so visibly scared to be there?”
HM: Scared for his own health?
AW: They weren’t shaking hands already! We hadn’t got to that point in Melbourne. As event organisers you’re always thinking about scenarios, what ifs, preparedness and everything, so several weeks in advance we put in place COVID-19 preparedness plans. We had social distancing, and some of the things we had to put in place were that the drivers didn’t have autograph sessions. When they come along, normally Daniel Ricciardo’s having selfies, hugs, high-fives and everything, so we put signs up which said please respect the wishes of the drivers not to have social contact.
HM: Take me through from Wednesday night, through to cancellation on Friday morning. I understand that there were nine precautionary tests done, and one was positive in that period?
AW: By midway through Thursday, nine personnel had presented for cautionary testing. We were aware that the testing had been done, because that’s the nature of the teams being very, very meticulous in their preparation, but I don’t think we thought there would be a positive. When one of the nine tested positive late on the Thursday, a member from McLaren team, alarm bells started ringing very loudly.
PL: One of the problems that we had was that the precautionary tests were taking too long to get a result. It was taking more than 24 hours, time we didn’t have. We got turnaround down to something like seven hours in the end, but we didn’t even have the luxury of that long in the end, as events were moving too quickly.
AW: On the Thursday we had the situation that there were eight tests that were going to be coming back, plus one non-Formula One personnel test that was due on Friday. On the Thursday night, day one of the event has happened, it was fantastic, the drivers are waving to the fans, they’ve had Q&A on the autograph stage, Supercars had been out there, and lots of people had been in the venue. We’d done press conferences with the Emergency Services Minister, and senior representatives from the emergency services, to tell everyone about what we were going to do with recognising the efforts of those who played a role in the relief and recovery around the bushfires. A little-known fact, we were going to have one of the firebombers fly over at the start of the race on the Sunday.
HM: You were still very confident all would go ahead?
PL: We thought with every hour that went past, there was a greater chance that the event would go ahead unimpeded. The Thursday night official welcome at Government House was really important, because clearly as part of the GP build up, this is a profile event, we have visitors from Formula One, we’ve got visitors from offshore and dignitaries, and fans all coming together. The Governor is a great supporter of the event. We were hoping we would all go home, wake up on Friday to no positive tests, and hope that our event would run like normal. Of course, that wasn’t to be.
AW: We were all at Government House, 900 people there, and the tests results were imminent. We had an AGPC COVID-19 WhatsApp group. The first five came back negative, then another two … seven out of eight, all negative. That was within a few minutes. And then you think, hang on …
HM: … where’s the eighth?
AW: Someone rang me and said, “We have a positive”. It was McLaren. I had a chat to Paul, and to Ross Brawn and the Head of Comms at Formula One in the corner of the ballroom … we knew a wave was coming, we just didn’t know how big.
HM: What happens from there?
AW: We had a Critical Incident Management Response Team meeting. We raced back to a meeting room at Albert Park in pit building one and got talking. Formula One personnel are talking in another room, and we kept going back and forth. We were talking to the Health Department, the Chief Medical Officer of the Grand Prix who’s linked in with the DHHS — it was just an onslaught of scenarios and information — and a lot of it was contradictory or hypothetical. In checking the traceability through DHHS, we were advised by Formula One who had been on the phone to McLaren, and they said, “I’ve been on the phone to Zak Brown (McLaren’s CEO), the person has had contact with everyone. McLaren is withdrawing from the Grand Prix”.
HM: What time was that?
AW: About 9.30-10 o’clock.
HM: Thursday night?
AW: That’s right. Ross, the Formula One people and FIA go and meet with all the team bosses at Crown in someone’s room. We’re continuing to go through our stuff, working out what is happening here from our end. What does that mean for us? Then the other teams and Formula One had to work out what happens if one team doesn’t participate, or couldn’t participate, and what the ramifications of that would be.
PL: The problem was everyone was either asleep, or in this meeting at Crown and weren’t answering their phones! And then we went through a period where we were trying to understand if one team withdrew from the event, could the event possibly run without one team?
HM: Has that ever happened before, a team has pulled out due to a health risk?
PL: Not that we were aware of.
AW: Everything was unchartered.
PL: F1 regulations deem it necessary that there had to be a minimum number of teams in the event for it to qualify as a F1 championship round, and ultimately that was confirmed as six teams, with FIA discretion.
AW: At this stage, London is starting to wake up, we’re talking to Ross Brawn who’s just gone to the hotel and talking to his people, the CEO of Formula One (Chase Carey) is in transit from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City and can’t be contacted, the FIA personnel are talking to Jean Todt, who’s the president of the FIA in Paris … it was full-on.
HM: When you were weighing up the scenario and whether you were going to proceed, what were you considering?
PL: Number one, clearly, was the health and safety of the teams, their employees, the patrons coming through the gate, and our people out there working the event.
AW: Health number one, everything else a distant second.
PL: Absolutely. That’s why we were in constant contact with the Chief Health Officer. We were getting updates all the time on the medical side of things.
HM: And were the updates changing drastically by the hour?
PL: When we had the positive test confirmed, everything changed. We found out the positive test result belonged to a key member of the McLaren team, and then we were trying to understand, “could you run the event without McLaren?”
AW: And that’s because the ECU’s (electronic control unit) that exist in all the cars, for all teams, are supplied by McLaren technology.
HM: Really?
AW: Yeah.
HM: The other teams rely on one team for that particular part?
PL: A really important part!
HM: It’s surprising to me as an F1 novice that can be the case.
AW: And then you’ve got the engine manufacturers. You’ve got Renault, Mercedes, Ferrari and Honda. If Mercedes is pulling out, then are the teams that are using Mercedes engines going to participate?
PL: It really was health and welfare number one. We were trying to work out how we could look after our loyal fans, already lining up outside the track from the early hours of Friday morning. We were very conscious of our obligations to them. We were also acutely aware of the financial ramifications for the state of Victoria, key suppliers and other competitors. A lot of money is invested in this event, we had people and patrons that had bought millions of dollars’ worth of tickets over the four days, the knock-on effect of the event not going ahead was difficult to comprehend from all points of view.
HM: You were caught in the eye of the storm — did you work straight through the night?
PL: We got a couple of hours away from the track, but there was a level of chaos when we arrived Friday morning. People were flying in all directions, the mood had changed dramatically again in four hours or so. From the time we got back to the track Friday morning, the pace was furious.
HM: And you still at this time haven’t been able to get hold of Chase Carey?
PL: Chase was in the air on a flight from Vietnam scheduled to arrive at 9.30am. Andrew and I were there from about 6am onwards.
AW: During the night, when we left the circuit and we headed home, the Europeans were still talking to their head offices. The rumour mill was the event was off, on again, off, but nothing had been finalised and there were ongoing meetings between F1 and the FIA. Clearly, the media had formed a view about where it was heading, and this is why there was a level of uncertainty. One of the teams had spoken to the media in Europe, and they’ve said, “it’s off — it isn’t happening”’ and that was being reported internationally, while others were reporting it was on. We had agreed with Formula One, that until there was a meeting, there would be no decision or public announcement.
PL: Two key things had to happen between 8.30am and 9.00am. One was we were waiting for confirmation from Formula One, on the persistent rumours that the event wouldn’t proceed and that we knew nothing about, and the second was a final update from the DHHS.
HM: Were you both starting to believe or be influenced by what you’re hearing in the media?
PL: There were rumours and misinformation flying around everywhere. We were steeling ourselves to deal with what we had in front of us and trying to simplify the decision one way or the other based on facts.
HM: While you are surrounded by mayhem?
AW: Track activity was starting at 9.10am, so all the marshals and officials were actually in position. While they’re waiting, they’re looking at blogs, and what they’re seeing are all these news services that not only are saying the race is off, someone at the airport has seen Kimi Räikkönen and Sebastian Vettel jump on an Emirates flight! They’ve sent that information to Eddie McGuire and Luke Darcy at Triple M. We didn’t know that! Many are saying the whole event has been cancelled, and we haven’t told anyone.
HM: Had you made a decision at that point?
AW: No! The reality was that we still hadn’t had the right conversations to finalise the position. The other conversation that Paul insisted on having is making sure that the Premier and Major Events Minister, who were both interstate at national ministerial meetings, were also communicated to in the right manner about the event.
HM: At this point, things are changing by the minute, you’ve got Formula One drivers photographed in their seats on an airline going home, and you’ve got local radio stations saying that’s the case, but you haven’t actually made a definitive decision.
PL: No. We were still waiting on Formula One to come back to us with confirmation of the final decision.
HM: And while that’s happening, the assumption is it’s off?
PL: Formula One needed to make a decision. Naturally we had a strong view on it, but we wanted them to clear up some of the information we had been given about teams not wanting to race, and votes being taken by the drivers, and whether they could meet the minimum number of cars on the track. It was totally outside of our control. Also, we were waiting for crystallisation of facts from our Chief Health Officer who had been on the phone, but we wanted to get things in writing. Between 8.30am and 9.00am, both of those critical inputs were received.
HM: You are waiting for the information to come from F1. It arrives, and says?
PL: They are withdrawing. The event won’t go ahead. The realisation hit hard.
AW: They advised us of their intention to cancel all Formula One activity and the Formula One Australian Grand Prix. That was the unified position of the FIA and Formula One. F1 is cancelled. That decision was finalised at 9.00am when we got it in writing.
HM: Who sent it?
AW: General Counsel in head office in UK. Chase (Carey) arrived at 9.28am, and as soon as he arrived, he’s on the phone talking to his key people: Ross Brawn in Melbourne and his General Counsel in London. It was important to make sure that before the announcement, Chase is talking to us, and the minute he arrived, the release went out.
PL: We had AGPC people conveying updates as much as possible to the fans. We needed to tell them the facts, they knew there was a very big problem at that stage.
AW: This is the issue. At 8.45am the gates were meant to open, but we still hadn’t had things finalised appropriately. We had people out there to let the fans know that gates opening was delayed, and ultimately cancelled. That was what the disappointment was. As sports fans, we were just as disappointed.
PL: We wish we could have handled that better with our fans, but it was impossible.
HM: You make that announcement, everyone packs up and goes home, the fallout then starts.
PL: There was then a sense of, “is this really happening?”. I was staring out of my office window looking at people walk out of the track, and everyone looked lost. It was an unusual feeling, and it was important to take that in. The fans, the press conference, and then the empty feeling out on the track, where there should have been excitement and joy, and there was nothing. Those feelings will stick with me.
HM: What’s the lasting memory for you Andrew, from that 24-hour period?
AW: We never had the venue looking better. We never had so many activations, everything was right for a sensational event, and it was ripped out from underneath us. It was disappointment for the fans, the suppliers, we had food that needed to be disseminated to the charities. I felt hollow, empty, but when you look at what’s happened to the Formula One and the MotoGP season now, it was the right decision. There are no regrets, it was the right decision based on everything. We gave it a red hot go to deliver the event for the Victorian Government, the fans, and for the obligation of the season.
PL: I agree with Andrew’s sentiments, and in addition the financial saving for the state of Victoria was a very significant outcome. The worst nightmare for the AGPC would have been if the event didn’t go ahead and we still had to pay the promoter’s license fee to F1.
HM: What was the outcome that you reached in the end with ticket holders?
AW: Full refunds.
HM: If you had your time again, what would you have done differently?
PL: That’s the question that we all need to get comfortable with. For me, nothing, other than perhaps the disappointment of the fans on the Friday. For me, that is a lingering memory that I wish we could have avoided that situation.
AW: We made the right decisions with all the available information at the right time. I was very disappointed for the fans who waited to see their heroes and had waited for an hour or so to get the best vantage point.
PL: Baring in mind that the magnitude of the challenge we had in front of us was only becoming really apparent on the Thursday night, could we have got to anyone late Thursday night? Not really.
HM: You can’t tell the fans something you don’t know.
PL: We didn’t have certainty. The Andrews government was really supportive. Plus Formula One, Chase Carey, handled an incredibly difficult situation professionally, and the AGPC team were amazing.
HM: What happens for 2021? Absolutely uncertain?
AW: With the way that the virus is playing out, what we’re going to have to do is shape the destiny of the event and how its run, staged, and be very adaptable. We will keep all options open.
PL: There’ll be an event, it’s more around what it looks like, not if!
HM: And the MotoGP … another tough call, albeit with a little more time for people to get their heads around.
PL: It was, unfortunately we just had to announce in conjunction with Dorna the cancellation of the 2020 Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix. We’re disappointed that MotoGP fans won’t get the chance to make the pilgrimage to Phillip Island in October, but the right decision has been made and it’ll be back better than ever in 2021.”
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