Finally, there's some good news for petrol heads. The 2020 Formula 1 season is all set to start on July 5 in Austria. It would be the first of the eight races to be held in Europe.

All the races would be conducted behind closed doors with participants strictly following guidelines in an attempt to minimise the spread of the novel coronavirus.

In a statement, F1 said that the championship would begin across three consecutive weekends. The first two Grands Prix would be held in Austria on July 5 and 12, while the third event would be organised in Hungary on July 19.

After the first three race weekends, there would be a two-week break before two consecutive races are scheduled to take place in Silverstone, Great Britain. After the races in Silverstone, more events are lined up in Spain, Belgium, and Italy.

According to the statement, the British Grands Prix at Silverstone would be held on August 2 and 9. Soon after that, the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona would be on August 16.

The Belgian and Italian events would happen on their originally scheduled dates of August 30 and September 6, respectively.

According to reports, F1 bosses have also proposed that some races could be run in a new format. In this newly proposed format, the grid for the main Grand Prix on Sunday could be decided by a shorter race held on Saturday.

However, such a plan is unlikely to be implemented because of Mercedes' opposition. F1 cannot change the rules without the approval of all teams.

McLaren boss Zak Brown said, "It would certainly add some jeopardy and some excitement to the sport so I personally would be a fan of experimenting because we might find we go, you know what, this is actually a pretty good idea, let's pull this forward into future use."

F1 said that it expects to conduct a total of 15-18 races at least before the season is completed in December.

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Formula 1 to start 2020 season in July Getty

It has been understood that Formula 1 is extremely confident of finishing this year's championship with races in Bahrain on December 6 and Abu Dhabi on December 13.

Before that, there are also possibilities of organising races in China, Vietnam, and Japan in October.

As far as the Russian Grand Prix, the race in Azerbaijan, and the events in the USA, Mexico, and Brazil are concerned, uncertainty prevails because of the high rates of COVID-19 infection in those countries.