Iceland Volcano Eruption Affects F1

The recently erupted volcano in Iceland has affected the world of Formula One during the Chinese Grand Prix. Although the two countries are separated by a couple of continents, the dark cloud of smoke from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano that seems to have stalled above most of northern Europe makes air travel close to impossible nowadays.

Consequently, some of the car parts that teams were expecting to debut in the Friday practice of the Chinese GP remained in Europe for the weekend. This is the case of Williams-Cosworth, who were planning to debut their brand new F-duct system these days. However, as the majority of the flights from Great Britain were cancelled on Thursday, the new device did not make it to China.

Additionally, it seems that Virgin Racing was also planning to add some new aerodynamic features on their VR-01 for the Chinese weekend but, just as Williams, they'll have to wait until Spain to actually see it on the race car.

“For several days you'll have crews and planes in the wrong places. It will take a few days to sort it out,” confirmed a British Airways spokesman yesterday, according to the GMM news agency, hinting that air travel will be messy for a longer period of time (probably more than just this weekend).

Under the circumstances, the teams will likely have some logistic problems of their own after the Sunday race, as traveling back to Europe might become a problem.

Another effect that the volcano had on F1 was that it kept one man – you might have heard of Eddie Jordan – in the UK for the weekend. The former F1 team boss is currently a pundit for the BBC and was one of the many victims of the airport strife.