While under Chase Carey's management there was a clear sense of naivety, his successor, Stefano Domenicali is already making use of his experience of both the sport and Planet Paddock to bring a much needed sense of reality to the sport’s decision making.

In light of the uncertainty over the pandemic, it was ludicrous, bordering on foolhardy and desperate, for Carey to announce a 23-date calendar, and while Domenicali is still citing that number as the target, the Italian, like many, appreciates that with it likely to be some time before normality returns (if ever), the sport is going to need to make compromises, both this season and in the coming years.

"Twenty-three races is a very important number of races, no doubt," he told Sky Sports. "In terms of quantity, in terms of attention, in terms of dedication of the people.

"There could be two positions on that respect," he continued, "some can say there are too many, others that that is not a problem.

"I would say that this equation will solve itself by the fact that if we're able to deliver an incredible product, we may go to a situation where maybe we can go back to a fewer number of races and then maybe the chance of a rotation is possible for certain Grands Prix, keeping a focus on different areas.

"This is something that is in our plan to think about carefully this year, getting ready for when the world is normal again."

The sport has already revised the calendar and now the season will gert underway in Bahrain before heading to Imola, however while the sort has denied that street races like Monaco are under threat, it is clear that the pandemic is not going away any time soon and there will therefore need to be further, possibly drastic, revisions.

Admitting that sport needs to be "flexible", and it is still unclear where the sport goes after Imola, he said: "What I can share is that I'm personally speaking on a daily basis with all the organisers.

We know the pandemic is still there, that's why we changed the place in the calendar of Australia.

"So far the information we have is that everyone really would like to go ahead with the plan," he continued. "Of course we need to be flexible enough to understand that maybe in the first part of the season we may have some events with no public or with restricted members of the public.

"But what I can assure our supporters, our fans, is that really we want to make sure that the season is there, we have a commitment and we want to take that on board, and we have possible alternatives in case, but so far no one has given us different information to what we have shared.

"This is what we know today, but we know how the pandemic has evolved so we need to be ready for a flexible approach on the season," he admitted.