The race to vaccination before the Dutch Grand Prix

The Dutch authorities have sent a provisional note to F1 and the FIA regarding vaccination. In order to access the Zandvoort circuit (September 5), the Dutch government is requesting that all staff members of all teams (F1, FIA, media, and Pirelli) be vaccinated.

However, this poses a problem for people based in England. It turns out that Saudi Arabia had the same requirement to attend the Grand Prix, but the Jeddah race will take place on December 5th. This left a margin for all individuals who were not yet vaccinated. With this demand from the Dutch authorities, this deadline is shortened by nearly 3 months.

The deployment of the vaccination in the United Kingdom is not at the same stage as in other countries. On the other side of the English Channel, people in their thirties can finally get vaccinated. However, some teams include people in their twenties, who may be short on time in the vaccination process. Even though the interval between two doses has been reduced from 12 to 8 weeks, it leaves little time to act.

At the beginning of the year, the government of Bahrain offered free doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to all people on site, the only limitation being to wait 21 days between two injections.

The Italian teams, Ferrari, AlphaTauri, and Pirelli took advantage of the offer provided by the Bahraini government. Only Alfa Romeo, which, like the British teams, left the choice to its staff, due to a legal obligation not to compel vaccination.

Formula 1, as an entity, had also decided not to get vaccinated for public relations reasons, in order to avoid being seen as queue-jumping.

There is still one problem: can the vaccination received in Bahrain be converted into a British vaccination passport?