Formula 1 chairman and CEO defended the sport’s handling of the Australian Grand Prix, which was cancelled just hours before the first practice session was supposed to begin.

The championship pressed on with plans to hold its season-opening race despite the rising threat of the Coronavirus and in the face of strong criticism from the likes of Lewis Hamilton

It was eventually forced to abandon its efforts almost 12 hours after McLaren withdrew from the race when one of its team members tested positive for the virus.

“I want to add our thoughts with those individuals that have been affected by this,” said Carey at a press conference which was convened after the race was cancelled.

“I also want to express our disappointment on behalf of the fans. This is the race we always look forward to, great fans here. We’re sorry not to have it, but it’s been a very fluid situation.”

Before the race was cancelled some fans arrived at the circuit in the morning to find the gates were still shut at their appointed opening time, and were not allowed in.

“I think we’ve made the right decisions,” said Carey. “We worked well with our partners. I think we’re all disappointed to not have it. But these are challenging times and I think we’ve made the decisions we have to make.”

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Carey said he has held discussions over other upcoming races in the calendar but the rapidly-changing nature of the threat posed by the Coronavirus makes it hard to predict when they will make decisions on whether those events can go ahead.

“I just came in from Vietnam, so we are in discussion with partners on upcoming races. But I think at this point what we really want to do is make sure we deal with the issues here, deal with them properly.

“In the coming days, clearly, we will be addressing the events yet to come. It’s a pretty difficult situation to really predict. Everybody uses the word fluid, it is obviously a fluid situation.

“The situation today is different than it was two days ago, it is different than it was four days ago. So trying to look out and make those sorts of predictions when you know it’s changing this quick, it’s challenging.”

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2020 F1 season