Mekies: The biggest challenge will be wearing the mask

With Formula 1 set to get underway in Austria next weekend, the series has set out a number of strict guidelines to guarantee the safety of all the team members and drivers involved.

One such measure states that all team personnel must wear masks and Mekies believes this will prove a challenge, especially in the heat.

“In a very basic way the biggest challenge, especially for the guys in the garage, will be to wear the mask at all times,” said Mekies.

“We have started to get used to it, as it’s becoming part of our normal life. We wear it in the factory and the office, but it’s one thing to wear it in an office environment, it’s something else to wear it when it’s 40C or very hot at the race track so we think this will be the biggest challenge.”

In order to keep contact to a minimum teams will be limited to 60 operational staff, with those staff travelling to all the races.

However, Mekies said Ferrari have opted to cut non-technical staff in order to limit the impact on pit stops and engineering.

“We had to cut mainly non-technical people so as a result the pit stop operations and engineering operations are not so much affected,” he said.

“They are a little bit affected because for global responsibility we have tried to take as little people as possible to the race track to be at the limit, but overall you will not see a big change in the number of people working on a pit stop or on operations.

“It’s just an incentive for us to reduce the numbers to do as many things as we can remotely. As you know, we have a remote garage here [in Maranello] to support our operations, so everything we could we are doing remotely, as I’m sure the other teams are doing.”