I may be in a minority in F1 circles, but I like going to Russia. To be fair, I didn’t always feel that away, because we are all conditioned to believe things and we have prejudices as a result, even if sometimes we are not really aware of them. The one thing I have found in life is that the more you travel, the fewer prejudices you have because you see the world and realise that people are people wherever they are. Prejudice is very often the result of fear of the unknown and the thing which gets rid of it fastest is knowledge of the humanity of others. I remember way back in the Cold War the singer Sting wrote a song called Russians. The song was about the strategy of mutually assured destruction in the Cold War, if anyone launched a missile there would be instant retaliation. Sting hoped that it wouldn’t happen because Russians love their children as much he loved his son. People are people, no matter the language they speak and the culture they live in. They all have the same basic priorities.

It has since emerged that there were several occasions when Russians ignored alerts suggesting that they were under attack because the people with the authority to react wanted to verify the information before pushing any buttons. One of them was Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, who was in charge of the early-warning system when alarms suggested that the Americans had launched six intercontinental ballistic missiles. Petrov disobeyed his orders because he believed that the Soviet satellite warning system had malfunctioned.

We all owe him for this… although he received little recognition for what he had done.

I started enjoying my visits to Russia when I stopped staying in the international style hotels around the Olympic Park and switched to a local hotel, where no-one speaks any English. It may seem strange to say that this meant that I was no longer isolated from the locals. Everything became more enjoyable, more human, more difficult, but more likeable. Things are always better when they don’t go as planned. You learn more from failure than from success. Oh my God, I sound like Toto Wolff! But, I absolutely get what he means about appreciating adversity because of what you learn from it.

One of the reasons for my travelling this year has been to understand what it is like in different countries – and the contrasts have been stark. I’m not sure you can say one nation has done it right and others haven’t, but it really depends on the people. I do think F1 has done remarkably well, even if the whole process has been frustrating for the media. The Russian GP weekend was a low point in this respect with the number of international visiting media in Sochi, numbered just eight: four Brits, two Frenchman, a Dutchman and a Spaniard. There were two Russians as well but we don’t see them often elsewhere.

It was quite shocking, but having gone through the process of getting here, I can see why a lot of folk didn’t want to fight their way through the red tape to get minimal access. Of course, it was all the more frustrating to see the paddock filled with non-essential oligarchs and their hangers-on, driver relatives and others who really were not needed at all – at least not any more than the media. F1 is supposed to be a media sport but it is very clear that when F1 execs talk of media they don’t give a monkeys about the written press, even if the articles written are read by far more people than are willing to sign up for F1’s OTT service or the pay-per-view options that are offered by the TV companies that get all the access. It is a very unhealthy situation (and I don’t mean in relation to Covid-19) when the properly-accredited free press is not permitted to take part.

My views about fraudulent folk pretending to be F1 reporters are wellknown, and while I get accused by them of being against the new generations of “reporters” because they are new and ambitious, this is not the case at all. I am happy to help, if they are competent, honest and trying to earn their place, rather than thinking that the deserve such status just because they have an opinion and can post on social media.

Anyway, let us not waste too much time with such folk. The sad truth is that access to the paddock will probably not improve as I suspect that we will see an upswing in the number of cases in the next couple of weeks. I heard rumours in Sochi that there was an outbreak in one of the in-paddock catering crews during the Russian GP weekend, although this is hard to verify if one isn’t allowed in and with the laws of privacy that exist. When it came to Russian attitudes towards the pandemic, a lot of F1 folk were shocked by what they experienced. Outside the circuit almost no-one was wearing masks and people were not observing social distancing. I asked the circuit people about this and they said that the population is not interested in taking precautions, despite the fact that the number of deaths are rising again. F1 people do limit their interactions with the world around them but not all are as dilligent as others. You can see a lot of interaction going on between different teams these days and while everyone is wearing masks, the bubbles don’t see to be taken as seriously as once they were. We will see.

In the course of the weekend Kimi Raikkonen made his 322nd start in Formula 1, equalling Rubens Barrichello’s record which was set when when the Brazilian finally departed F1 at the end of 2011, but it was barely mentioned. I guess that this is because Kimi doesn’t care and because others are waiting to write about it when he breaks the record in Germany next week. One can argue that it is easier now to get bigger totals because there are more races each year and it is true that the number has crept up over time, but it is still a pretty impressive career.

In theory there will be 22 Grands Prix next year compared to the 16 that used to be the case when I started out. However, as yet there is no calendar for next year and I doubt we will see one any time soon. Each new draft lasts only a few days, or so I am told.

The figure of 22 was mentioned when I bumped into Chase Carey in a car park back in July (we were suitably-distanced and wearing masks) and this is interesting because of the 22 that were supposed to happen this year, one or two will not be there – and that means that we will likely see some new deals. The original calendar was Australia, Bahrain, Vietnam, China, Netherlands, Spain, Monaco, Azerbaijan, Canada, France, Austria, Britain, Hungary, Belgium, Italy, Singapore, Russia, Japan, US, Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi. There were three races with contract renewals required (I believe) Brazil, Russia and Monaco. The Formula 1 group has no real desire to go back to Brazil until a new circuit is built in Rio de Janeiro. Russia and Monaco will presumably renew, so if we are getting a new race in Jeddah,the calendar is already full. In 2022, however, we have a few new contracts due with the US, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Austria and Hungary requiring new deals. I think that Austria and Hungary were given one-year contract extensions and special one-off deals for this year and that may be true for Bahrain and Abu Dhabi was well.

Formula 1 is in a good situation in that there seems to be a lot of demand (at the moment) but we will have to see what happens as the economic impacts of Covid-19 are felt. Ironically, the pandemic could increase demand because countries which have money but want to revive tourism (for example) might look upon F1 as a good idea. This seems to be the case with Turkey, which is now believed to be trying to get a full-time slot on the calendar once again…

The F1 group is hoping to go up to 23 races in 2022, 24 in 2023 and (God help us) 25 in 2024, but it won’t be easy to achieve that because teams are resisting such things as regular triple-headers and getting rid of the wildly-expensive and shockingly-cumbersome motorhomes. Incidentally, the upcoming Turkish race is going to feature another new idea because while the race equipment will be travelling by plane to Turkey, the motorhomes will be making the trip by boat. We’ve never had a flyaway-floataway before… The logic is that after Imola the race trucks will head back to England, while the motorhome trucks (more than 100 of them) will go to Trieste and take a boat which will give the truckies a pleasant two and a half day cruise down the Aegean, arriving at Pendik, just around the corner from the circuit at midday on Thursday.

The race that is probably the most interesting is the United States Grand Prix because Miami has gone quiet for a long time now and Las Vegas too. The latter is understood to want a race at Thanksgiving, which traditionally falls between November 22 and November 28, and that creates a problem because Abu Dhabi wants the last F1 race and that is normally in the same period as Thanksgiving… The future of Austin is clouded at best and the fact that the Circuit of the Americas has done a deal for a NASCAR race in the future suggests that we might not be travelling to Texas for much longer. The track has struggled to make the race viable – largely because of its huge construction debts. So what next as Liberty Media looks for two US races? I am hearing that there is serious discussion going on again with Indianapolis Motor Speedway, now owned and run by Roger Penske. He has invested a lot of money in the facility in recent times and has had no major financial return this year, because he had to run the Indy 500 without a crowd. He is about to run two back-to-back IndyCar races which will be called the Harvest Grand Prix. He has been able to get agreement to have a small crowd for these. Penske is ambitious and a celebrated business brain and he will no doubt have worked out that Indy might be the best available option for F1 as other races/projects falter. A long-term United States Grand Prix deal might be something that would suit him – if the price is right. The talks have been taking place but Penske himself his not been involved directly as the talks have been with one of his sons. While Indianapolis might not quite be a global destination city, as F1 wants, it is a practical solution, which would help the Canadian Grand Prix as well, as the two events could share some of the costs – as used to happen. And it could be justified because Indianapolis has long claimed to be the Racing Capital of the World. F1 ought to be able to build a business model around that, while negotiating to slot Vegas in as a second US race at Thanksgiving by convincing Abu Dhabi that it can go later in the year… There is an existing American team (Haas) and the word is that one of the more serious bidders in the ongoing rush to buy F1 teams is American. On paper, of course, Williams is now supposed to have an American owner, but it is pretty clear that the money behind that deal is British.

Elsewhere, with Callum Ilott and Mick Schumacher (and Robert Shwartzman) testing for Haas and Alfa Romeo, one has to presume that deals are up for grabs in 2021 and I am pretty sure we will see Yuki Tsunoda pop up fairly soon in a AlphaTauri, as he will likely be in the team next year, being a Red Bull and Honda driver… That would mean no Russian driver in F1 (because Dany Kvyat would be bounced), but with Shwartzmann and Nikita Mazepin both doing well in F2 and both having strong backing, we should have at least one Russian driver in F1 in 2022 (if not before).