HANOI, 16 March 2020: Vietnam has postponed the inaugural F1 VinFast Vietnam Grand Prix 2020, the first-ever F1 GP to be hosted in the country.
It follows the postponement of the F1 2020 series opener in Melbourne Australia and the second race in Bahrain.
“This is a tough decision as 2020 is the year Vietnam became one of the 22 official hosts of the F1 race,” the organisers told Nhan Dan the official news channel of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Slated for 3 to 5 April in Hanoi, it would have attracted around 300,000 visitors and was billed as a “booster for Vietnam’s tourism industry”.
The decision to postpone was announced by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), Formula One World Championship Ltd (F1), the Hanoi People’s Committee, and the Vietnam Motorsports Association (VMA) and with agreement from the Vietnam Grand Prix company (VFPC), Nhan Dan reported.
The organisers will announce a new date for the race in cooperation with the FIA that “will be safer and more suitable”.
After the race in Hanoi, the 2020 F1 series is scheduled to travel to Europe but with the lockdown in Spain, Italy and France due to the Covid-19 outbreak it is now is likely that the European races will also be postponed.
