The 'Ideal Time" For Corona Camp

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When the Formula One season gets under way finally there will be some obvious changes. One change is being discussed is if a driver becomes ill he can afford to miss two races without being penalised. If by some miracle Formula One completes 15 or 18 races this season they will come up with a revised points formula.

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If max only knew what Marko was thinking.

Helmet Marko the man behind Red Bull Racing had an idea back in early March when the Australian Grand Prix was cancelled. Not much was known about the virus back then as it was only thought of being a danger to the elderly. His idea went against any normal thinking and possibly why he is so successful at what he does.

His idea which he discussed with certain members of the team was to bring all the drivers to a Corona camp in Austria and hopefully have the virus spread amongst them. This as he put it was the "ideal time" to catch the Covid-19 virus as later in the season wouldn't be great.This would then give them time to recover and not have to worry about future infections later in the season. In theory I can see the thinking behind it, but can also understand why it wasn't well received.

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Christian Horner said when Marko first mentioned it he thought he was joking and never thought anything of it. He then realisd that Marko was deadly serious and told him it was not a good idea. You can understand the concern and why everyone was against it as can you imagine if one of the drivers died. The camp would have included the four Formula One drivers (Red Bull and Alpha Tauri) plus 10 juniors from the academy.

His thinking was that the drivers are all young men who are physically strong of sound health. Having a camp and letting nature take it's course spreading the virus and getting it over with would have been time well spent if the virus wasn't so unpredictable. He did voice this live on a tv channel and he said it was ""not well received".

I do like the thought process behind it though and it shows me why some of the teams are more succesful than the others. It is out of the box thinking that gives you advantages over others and not all idea will be well received but there are going to be some ideas which will be brilliant. Marko is the old school type of thinking which I think teams need as it gives them a balance of various opinions and ideas. I find the whole thing funny and would have loved t o be a fly on the wall when he discussed it with team principal Christian Horner.

I could never see Max Verstappen or Alex Albon agreeing to this anyway but drivers in the academy who wanted to get somewhere may have said yes as saying no to the boss would not have been a wise career move.