Dutch Grand Prix sporting director Jan Lammers is confident that F1's return to Zandvoort in September coupled with relaxed Covid restrictions will attract a crowd of over 100,000 fans per day.
Zandvoort's long-awaited F1 revival was scrapped last year following the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic, but the scheduling of the 2021 race in early September looks set to line up with the Netherlands' return to normality on the sanitary front.
The Dutch government announced last week a relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions from June 5, while social distancing and masking is expected to subside from September 1 according to Dutch health minister Hugo de Jonge.
Last year, before the cancellation of F1's return to Zandvoort's dunes, Lammers was forecasting a daily crowd capacity of approximately 100,000 spectators for the event.
©RedBull
Based on advanced ticket sales, including those from last year that remain valid for 2021, Lammers is confident this year's 'inaugural' event can easily hit that number – perhaps boosted by a 'Verstappen effect' - if all Covid-19 restrictions are indeed dropped by September.
"It's going in a positive direction very quickly, but that in itself is not so strange," the former F1 driver told the Dutch edition of Motorsport.com.
"Everyone knows now how to act with the virus around. And then you have the people who've already had corona and those who have already been vaccinated.
"If you take all of those things together, you already have a certain amount of spectators who are safe from getting the virus from someone else anyway.
"We don't have a clear idea of how big those numbers are at the moment, but it's looking good and that's nice."
Lammers pinpointed July 1 as the final deadline by which the Dutch Grand Prix will get the go-ahead.
"I think logic and common sense will make that decision for us," he added.
"We need two months to get everything logistically in order. That's more or less our deadline, to be able to put up all the temporary grandstands and things like that.
"But what is happening now is the result of all the positive things that have already happened in the past few months, if not in the past year. And we can all be proud of that.
"We have seen that days like the King's Day [national holiday] have not worsened the figures. And that is a wonderful sign.
"That means that the trend will continue, perhaps even faster than we are hoping for."
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