Formula 1 CEO Chase Carey insists in the event a driver becomes infected with coronavirus or a team withdraws from an event, races will not be cancelled.

The 2020 season is due to start on July 5 in Austria after F1 revealed the opening eight grand prix’s of the revised calendar on Tuesday.

A lot of preparation has gone into making sure all personnel will operate in a safe environment that reduces the risk of the virus spreading.

All team members will be tested every two days during races weekends and be segregated from mixing with other teams, as F1 aims to avoid a repeat of the Australian Grand Prix cancelation when a McLaren employee tested positive for COVID-19.

Speaking to the official F1 website, Carey was adamant a grand prix wouldn’t be stopped even if a driver became ill or a team pulled out in similar fashion to McLaren.

“An individual having been found with a positive infection will not lead to a cancellation of a race,” Carey said.

“We encourage teams to have procedures in place so if an individual has to be put in quarantine, we have the ability to quarantine them at a hotel and to replace that individual.

“Some things we’d have to talk through and work through. The array of ‘what ifs’ are too wide to play out every one of them, but a team not being able to race wouldn’t cancel the race.

“I don’t think I could sit here and lay out the consequences. But we will have a procedure in place that finding infection will not lead to a cancellation. If a driver has an infection, [teams have] reserve drivers available.

“We wouldn’t be going forward if we were not highly confident we have necessary procedures and expertise and capabilities to provide a safe environment and manage whatever issues arrive.”

F1 has held talks with teams over the possibility of running a reverse grid race as opposed to the one-hour qualifying session to experiment with the weekend format.

The idea, however, was quickly shelved as it failed to gain approval of all 10 teams, which had been planned to be used as part of Austria and Silverstone’s double-headers.

Carey said the setback wouldn’t prevent F1 from introducing changes in the future, but stressed gimmicks to improve the show weren’t part of its long-term goals.

“We’ve had discussions in the past couple of years about should we look at ways to make some changes that honour the sport, respect what has made the sport great but we think would be changes that would enhance the experience for fans,” said Carey.

“We’ve talked about a couple in the coronavirus context of these two [double-header] races. At this point we’ve had one that’s been publicised about a reverse grid that not all teams were comfortable with, and making changes in this short timeframe requires unanimity of support.

“We’re changing almost real time inside the season, but we’ll continue to look at ideas. We want to make sure they’re not gimmicks.

“It’s a great sport with great history, great heroes, great stars, incredibly talented drivers and other individuals so we want to respect everything to a degree but we want to make sure that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t look at ways to make some changes.”