F1 chief responds to Hamilton's 'cash is king' comments

Mercedes star Lewis Hamilton

Formula One chief executive Chase Carey hit back at Lewis Hamilton's claim that "cash is king" after cancelling the Australian Grand Prix.

Hamilton had on Thursday questioned the decision to go ahead with the opening race of the F1 season, a day before it was cancelled due to coronavirus fears.

The Mercedes star said "cash is king" when asked why the race was going ahead, but Carey hit back at that suggestion on Friday.

"I guess if cash was king we wouldn't have made the decision we did today," he told a news conference.

"In hindsight obviously things look different. There were events that evolved, situations that changed.

"We made a decision which given the lead time to come here, hold the event, at a point in time where major events were being held here, it was a different situation in the world, travelled, came, as the situation changed day to day and in some ways hour to hour obviously we continued to evaluate that and make the appropriate decisions going forward.

"I do think we were trying to digest a lot of different information to make the right decision at the right time and I think we did that."

Formula 1 and the FIA, with the full support of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC), have taken the decision that all Formula 1 activity for the Australian Grand Prix is cancelled pic.twitter.com/rHbc7hlNvH

— Formula 1 (@F1) March 12, 2020

Australian Grand Prix organisers are still hopeful the race may be held at another time in 2020, but uncertainty remains over the schedule.

Carey said decisions would be made in the coming days relating to upcoming events, with the Bahrain Grand Prix scheduled to be held behind closed doors on March 22.

"At this point our focus is really dealing with the issues this weekend," he said.

"Clearly I just came in from Vietnam so we are in discussion with partners about the upcoming races, but I think at this point what we really want to do is deal with the issues here and deal with them properly, but in the coming days clearly we will be addressing the events yet to come.

"It's a pretty difficult situation to really predict. Everybody is using the word fluid, it is obviously a fluid situation, the situation today is different than it was two days ago which is different than it was four days ago."