Brawn confident Austria double-header will be exciting

F1 managing director Ross Brawn says he believes that the Austrian Grand Prix double-header will still be exciting despite not using a reversed grid.

The double-header at the Red Bull Ring on July 5 and 12 is planned to kick off the revised 2020 season, with the teams then moving onto Hungary before another double-header at Silverstone in August.

Despite not all teams agreeing to the concept of using a reversed grid for double-header races, Brawn is hopeful that there will still be some excitement over the two weekends.

“We introduced the concept of a qualifying race, which was based on reverse championship order, and then that would take you through to the main event which would be the race on the Sunday,” Brawn told Autosport at the recent FIA conference.

“We discussed that last year, and we had pretty good support for that, but not unanimous. And it’s been the same case this year. There have been some teams who haven’t felt that’s something we should be doing.

“Our concern was simply where we have two races at the same track, because of the situation this year. We’re going to have two races in Austria, two races in Silverstone, possibly two races later in the year at one or another of the tracks.”

“I suspect Austria is going to be pretty exciting. [It’s the] beginning of the season, nature of the track there, everyone settling in, and I think we will find that we have two exciting races there without doing anything to it."

Brawn hints at different circuit configurations later in the year

Speaking on other potential venues for double-header race weekends after the British Grand Prix, Brawn revealed that multiple circuits are looking at possible races on different circuit configurations.

It has been rumoured in recent weeks that a number of venues such as Sochi, China and Bahrain are all in the frame two races each in order to make up for the races cancelled by the COVID-19 outbreak.

The organisers of the Sakhir International Circuit in Bahrain responded to these claims, noting that they are happy to run races on different circuit layouts, all of which hold an FIA Grade 1 licence necessary for an F1 race to take place.

“There are some small things we can do with the selection of tyre compounds, and one or two other things, but I think they’re quite minor. [Reverse grids] were a bigger step,” Brawn explained.

“One or two tracks later in the year have the added attraction they can run in a different configuration, so that might be an opportunity if we have a second race there to run the track in a different configuration and create some difference between the two races.”