Rossi’s positive test is a reminder no one needed that Covid could decide a championship

2020 F1 season

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We are long past the point of needing reminders that SARS-CoV-2 is no respecter of status.

Over a quarter of a million new cases of Covid-19 are being officially diagnosed each day. Today’s figure includes one of the greatest figures in motorsport, seven-times Moto GP champion Valentino Rossi, who has been ruled out of their upcoming race as a result.

Motorsport is a team endeavour, but the driver (or rider) is a uniquely important part of the equation. And in the case of championship contenders, they are irreplaceable. While Rossi may have already slipped out of realistic championship contention, his status is such that across the motorsport world anyone who is eyeing their shot at silverware will have taken note of his plight and reflected it is one they must avoid.

Of course no consequence of the virus is worse than the potential danger of contracting it. Well over a million people worldwide have died as a result of Covid-19.

But the vast majority of those are considerably older than the typical racing driver. The threat it poses to this athletic and healthy group is far less likely to be a matter of serious illness, more a question of disruption to their season, though there remains the little-understood implications of ‘long Covid’.

Sergio Perez, Racing Point, Spa-Francorchamps, 2020
Perez is thought not to have caught Covid-19 in Mexico
Despite a Covid-19 testing regime which has so far allowed Formula 1 to hold 11 consecutive races in eight different countries without disruption, there has already been one positive case on the grid. Sergio Perez was forced out of both Silverstone races as a result, and without that he could be eyeing a career-best fourth in the championship.

(While Perez was widely assumed to have contracted the virus during his trip to Mexico, according to the CEO of his Racing Point team, Otmar Szafnauer, he in fact caught it through a private chef who had been hired to prepare meals for him after he returned so he wouldn’t be exposed to the risk of eating in restaurants – a deeply unfortunate irony.)

Missing two races is a scenario no driver wants and any championship contender can ill afford. In the case of F1 championship leader Lewis Hamilton, the prospect of missing out on a couple of races because of a positive Covid-19 test is arguably the most realistic threat to him sealing a seventh world championship this year.

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With six races remaining he has a 69-point lead over team mate Valtteri Bottas. There may be 156 points still available, but the competitiveness of Hamilton’s Mercedes is such he can realistically expect a minimum finish of third in the remaining races, giving no more than 11 away to Bottas each time out.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Monza, 2020
Hamilton can ill afford to miss races
Unreliability? The power unit failure which struck Bottas last weekend was only the second race-ending failure for a Mercedes in the last 24 months.

In a normal championship year, we would say Hamilton is at the point where he can cruise and collect the title. Avoid all risks, bring the car home, bag the points, buy a new trophy cabinet with room for seven drivers’ cups.

Covid-19 changes that. Hamilton would be forgiven for starting to get a bit obsessive about the distancing, hand-washing, mask-wearing and isolating. Particularly as the virus has struck too close for comfort at least twice already.

Following the cancellation of the Australian Grand Prix it emerged several celebrities Hamilton had met at an event on March 4th, including Idris Elba and Sophie Trudeau, had tested positive for Covid-19. Hamilton issued a statement 17 days later saying he had no symptoms of the virus but had not been tested for it.

More recently two members of Hamilton’s Mercedes team tested positive for Covid-19, and others had to be isolated as a result.

Formula 1 has largely confined itself to Europe as a consequence of the pandemic. But recent weeks have seen a rise in the case rate which has prompted regional lockdowns in several countries. F1 has also seen a slight uptick in cases. Since then, as revealed by RaceFans, two Renault team members who were in Spain for Fernando Alonso’s filming day, also contracted Covid-19. The latest test data is expected to be published tomorrow.

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By no means is this concern limited solely to F1 and its drivers. Formula 2, IndyCar and many other series are due to crown their champions in the coming weeks and face the same threats.

Toto Wolff, Mercedes, Nurburgring, 2020
Wolff said Mercedes’ drivers are ‘living like hermits’
While there’s no reason Hamilton should be more susceptible to Covid-19 than any of his peers, a positive case would be a bigger blow in simple championship terms. The ultra-professional Mercedes team has therefore reduced the risks to both drivers to an absolute minimum.

“Obviously the drivers are the most restricted of the whole team,” said Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff following news of their positive cases last weekend. “It’s certainly not a great situation for them because you almost need to live like a hermit and that’s what they are doing.

“They are at home. They are not going out for dinners. They are not meeting any other people. Within the team we do the debriefs via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. They are not sitting with the engineers in the room. They are sitting in their own rooms and we are avoiding as much as possible any personal contact with them.

“We try do it as literally stepping into the car and keeping their distance as we belt them in and then drive. Because that is really critical for the championship, if you miss a race or two. So, unfortunately for them, they need to live a life that is a bit secluded, but we think the decisions we have taken are good and protect them.”

But in this respect F1 drivers and teams are grappling with the same question about Covid-19 many of us face every day: How careful is careful enough?

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Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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34 comments on “Rossi’s positive test is a reminder no one needed that Covid could decide a championship”

  1. 90% chance that he’ll not even notice so keep on racing!

    1. And just infect the rest of his team, track personnel and subsequently other teams? That would be a quick way to end the MotoGP season I guess.

      1. So we’re talking only about 20 deaths in the paddock? That’s completely fine just so Rossi can race right? Perfectly fine. /s Even if your completely made-up figures of 99% are true, we are still looking at 1% of the paddock ending up in a serious condition or far worse. No sport is worth that.

        1. The WHO estimate 700 million people have been infected. IFR is minuscule for anyone under 60, If you’re old and/or you should stay home. It’s turning into the biggest hysteria in human history.

          Best way to protect yourself is maintain good heath.

      2. Well, even if that were true George, with a 1600+ strong paddock, that 1% still means 16 people DO get a serious case.

    2. 100% chance that you’ve got your statistics wrong.

      1. Actually I was being conservative, its much higher. The main stream media is selling an agenda of fear.

        1. The main stream media is selling an agenda of fear.

          Typical parroting of QAnon and other weirdos.
          Happy to send you a direct link to the peer reviewed scientific researches, but I guess in your groups you don’t trust that either.
          Maybe I can make you happy if sharing a flat earth YT channel.

          1. Weird how a flat earth channel can make it round the globe… satellite signals must bounce off the sun or something… ;-)

          2. Do send the link, please

          3. Yeah, and with a flat earth we wouldn’t need time zones…… I wonder how this pancake orbits the sun, which must also be flat, I guess. Difficult stuff. And don’t mention ‘chemtrails’.

          4. @jimmi-cynic

            Weird how a flat earth channel can make it round the globe… satellite signals must bounce off the sun or something… ;-)

            Cmon man everybody knows they make it across the big disc via light tunnels.

            @keithcollantine when are we stopping the anonymous comments? :-)

          5. Weird how a flat earth channel can make it round the globe

            Merely pendulating above the plate, @jimmi-cynic. And through its rhythmic movements hypnotising those who decided to rest their brain cells and rely on FB and YouTube instead.

          6. Ciccio (16th October 2020, 0:23)
            Do send the link, please

            Suggest you use this study from Nature (as it’s one of the few studies testing representative cohorts [all age/etc. groups] and longitudinal [over time]).
            The study comes up with an asymptomatic percentage of 42.5% (95% CI: 31.5–54.6%), thus far from the ridiculous claim by George that it could be 90% or even 99%.

            Other studies confirm though that asymptomatic infections for younger people will be lower than the overall number; but the rates are still estimated as 2/3 at best for the 10-20yo’s (and increasing for the age group Rossi/Hamilton are in).
            But at the same time you need to take into account that the main criticism against the above linked study is that the asymptomatic estimate is most likely overstated due to false positive PCR test results.

          7. What is this so called ‘nature’ journal @coldfly? Does it have the same impact factor as my flat earther journal, and is subject to peer review by George?

            sarcasm

          8. @balue, I reply to you because from previous posts you seemed a smart person.
            1) this is only symptomatic on there day of the test. People might get symptoms later (typically 1-4 days after infectious) or has the symptoms before (hence quarantining up to 10 days after first symptoms).
            The other (and most likely bigger miss) is that all tests have a percentage of false positives. Even if that percentage is as low as 0.5% (best in class) then it could well be that there were no positive cases at all and all 115 just false positives.

          9. @coldfly Lol, you blast others for not trusting peer reviewed scientific research, and then 2 posts later you yourself call one BS when it doesn’t fit your narrative. But then it was always thus in your groups.

          10. @balue, I merely taught you how to read it. Doesn’t change anything to the research nor the conclusions.
            It does not claim that a high number remains asymptomatic, but that “ Symptoms of Covid-19 are a poor marker of infection”. But that’s clearly too subtle for you. Nothing new here :P

          11. @balue as @coldfly notes, you appear to have misinterpreted the information that is presented within that particular article as implying one thing when the interpretation that ColdFly has presented is the one that is consistent with what those researchers were actually looking for.

            The main purpose of the study was about developing testing strategies that can identify whether individuals are potentially infectious before they have begun to exhibit symptoms, rather than relying on them developing symptoms as a sign that they should then be tested.

            Furthermore, he is right to state that the UCL paper does not actually say that 86% of those tested were asymptomatic – what the paper actually states is that “(86.1%) did not report SARS-CoV-2 specific symptoms on the day of the test”.

            In other words, that 86% figure will include individuals who could have actually been exhibiting some of the symptoms of Covid-19 at the time they were tested – it’s just that those symptoms, by themselves, would not have provided clear evidence that it was definitely Covid-19 that they were suffering from. In addition to that, the 86% figure will include individuals who might not have appeared ill at the time, but will have gone on to exhibit symptoms of having Covid-19.

            The same paper by those researchers at UCL went to to acknowledge that, although there are challenges in comparing results from different clinical studies due to the sampling methods and clinical setting, there have been other studies which point to rather lower rates of people being asymptomatic.

            One of the examples they reference is the peer-reviewed study from Italy that Coldfly has already linked to, which yielded a result of 42%, as well as also referencing a study from the United States that indicated a rate of 39% (Patel MC, Chaisson LH, Borgetti S, et al. Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 mortality during an outbreak investigation in a skilled nursing facility.) and a study from Iceland (Gudbjartsson DF, Helgason A, Jonsson H, et al. Spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the Icelandic population) that indicated 43%.

            However, they noted the Icelandic study was, again, those who were asymptomatic at the time of testing – some of those who were tested did later develop symptoms, so the Icelandic study probably overestimated the number of asymptomatic cases).

            The study that Coldfly has linked to, and the rates of asymptomatic carriers, that he has quoted would therefore seem to be more consistent with the outcomes from other clinical studies into that topic, and would point to a lower rate of asymptomatic carriers.

          12. @coldfly And when you read the paper’s title “Three Quarters of People with SARS-CoV-2 Infection are Asymptomatic: Analysis of English Household Survey Data” you just thought BS to that, and craftily chose the university article headline to the paper to attack instead. Then you talk about subtlety..

          13. @Anon: 75% had no symptoms at all, 86% no covid-related symptoms. One can wonder what those symptoms might have been, but still.

        2. main stream media

          So the actual media. The ones that report facts. Got it.

          1. You really think the media just report facts? I hope you’re not that naive

            Now let’s look at the data shall we?
            https://youtu.be/CPmWYFlUK54

          2. Saad, I watched a bit of your link. It focusses on death rates. The problem is not just that, albeit important, its the fact hospitals fill up with people and then other illnesses cannot be treated. That’s why we have to have lockdowns, and avoid asymptomatic people spreading the illness without them knowing it. If we didn’t take this seriously hospitals would not be able to cope.

            Anyway, I’ve had quite enough of my fill of human stupidity for today.

  2. Hamilton could get COVID for the rest of the season and Bottas would still find a way to mess it up.

    1. He would only likely miss 1 race, and at most, 2 races, so he will still easily win the title regardless.

  3. That’s a shame for Rossi, but this situation he’s doesn’t really change anything, as he hasn’t been much of a factor in the championship anyway for years now.

  4. Rossi is not in contention for championship trophy anyways, he had a hattrick of DNFs of his own doing in last 3 races. Hopefully he will get rest and clear his head and return to track.

    1. Stephen Higgins
      16th October 2020, 10:28

      Vale` has been a great champion, one of greatest ever, but like Kimi in F1, you have to wonder if he’s sticking around more out of habit these days.

  5. It would be especially interesting to see the results of antibody testing for the F1 Paddock. That would shed some light on the rate or number of past undiagnosed infections. In a similar way to what Major League Baseball undertook a few months ago.
    The early posts dueling over the Case and Infection Fatality (CFR and IFR) rates were especially entertaining.
    Come on guys (apologies for the assumption of gender) , get your understanding sorted out, CFR vs IFR, yes, there is a difference, a BIG difference.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_fatality_rate
    Hamilton’s choice and uses of his clearly preferred mask could use some adjustment. The exhaust valve is a give-a-way to a one sided approach to virus spread. At least it keeps the dust out. The fact that the valve switches from left to right on occasion, a mystery. Does he have it on upside down, could be.? Does he care, not likely.

  6. @john-h Couldn’t reply to you up there so I’ll do it here. What you said is now a non issue. Even during the middle of the epidemic we weren’t seeing hospitals overflow all round the country. A few did. I even remember them shutting the nightingale early. Also your assumption that lockdowns slow the spread. They do not, and that’s based on evidence. Lets forget the coronavirus and focus on another respiratory illness like influenza. Now we know it’s not as deadly as the virus but flu infections can help us understand if masks and lockdowns work because they spread easily like the coronavirus.

    If you go back and check the graphs, flu cases remain pretty constant with previous years, and pretty constant throughout the whole year despite lockdown restrictions being hardened and eased, masks coming in at some point and even now they are the same with current new rules. You just can’t use the argument ‘if we didn’t lockdown the flu rates would be higher’ because that’s nonsense. Flu rates are the same as previous years. So how does that argument suddenly become valid for the coronavirus?

    Add to that the fact that Sweden never locked down, only reached 60% icu capacity in the midst of the outbreak and suffered less in terms of fatality and business closures and unemployment etc and is now back to the old normal. That’s hard evidence that lockdown does not work and that the modelling of predictions of deaths was way off. Prof. John Ioannidis published a paper which basically tore the modelling appear and made somewhat more sensible predictions. What actually happened? The death rate followed his predictions. Is the WHO have supported his paper and predictions and now even they are saying that countries shouldn’t lock down to control the spread.

    If you watch the video in full, the ‘orofessor’ on tv goes on to explain that they’re expecting worst case 30000 deaths which is nonsense. Nonsense because we’ve seen what the curves look like. Spain and France are ahead of us and their death rates flattened after increasing. Nothing like the exponential increase he and others like him and the media are predicting.

    1. Honestly, there are so many statements in there I don’t agree with and false assumptions that there is no point me replying, it would just fall on deaf ears.
      https://www.who.int/influenza/surveillance_monitoring/updates/latest_update_GIP_surveillance/en/

    2. Flu cases same as previous years?

      Really?

      Here’s an article from the BMJ contradicting that assertion: with GP monitoring figures suggesting flu and other respiratory diseases are well down on the five year average:

      https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3182

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