The entry of Las Vegas and the return of Qatar and China are the big news along with the fall of Paul Ricard. The season will last three more weeks, it maintains its start and finish places, and the Spanish Grand Prix is moved to June.
The final calendar of the 2023 season of the Formula 1 World Championship has finally seen the light this Tuesday, and for the second consecutive year it registers a record number of events. If the 2022 season was initially going to have 23 races (finally reduced to 22 due to the cancellation of the Russian Grand Prix), for next year a further step has been taken in expanding the calendar with a total of 24 scheduled appointmentsapproved by the FIA at its last meeting of the World Motor Sport Council.
The start and finish places remain unchanged, although the season itself will last three weeks longer than in 2022: Bahrain Grand Prix moved up two weeks to March 5ththis being the earliest start of the World Championship since 2002, and the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will put an end to the November 26, a week later than this year. Therefore, the championship will avoid the month of December again, this time without the pretext of the World Cup.
Loading tweet…
1572230043367264261
The big news regarding 2022 are the introduction of the Las Vegas Grand Prixwhich will host the penultimate round on November 18, and the second edition of the Qatar Grand Prix for October 8, this time with a fixed place on the calendar after being played in 2021 as a substitute event. In turn, it has been programmed the return of the Chinese Grand Prix for April 16a date much earlier than the estimates that placed it in the fall to maximize the options of its dispute, after three years of cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As already announced during this year’s edition, Belgium continues one more year, largely because negotiations to bring the Great Circus to South Africa have yet to come to fruition. The striking thing is, as a result of the readjustments with the introductions of Qatar and Las Vegas, the test in Spa-Francorchamps misses his usual date after the summer break, which he has held since 1988, and will be held on July 30. By contrast, the anticipated crash of the French GP it is already a reality, consummating the exit of Paul Ricard from the calendar after hosting only four races in this modern stage.
Other big date shifts affect the initial stretch of the season: Azerbaijan goes from mid-June to the end of Aprilas happened in 2018 and 2019, and the Emilia Romagna GP is delayed a month until May 21, placing the Imola race in the place usually occupied by the Spanish Grand Prix. This, therefore, is delayed two weeks and will be played on June 4, after Monaco and as the third consecutive race in three weeks. It will be only the second time in history that Montmeló hosts the GP in June, something that had only happened in 1996.
Singapore and Japan will continue together, but two weeks are advanced to cover the September gap, the rest of the rounds only register slight displacements of one week. Despite the increase in races, back-to-back situations have been reduced from nine to seven with GP in consecutive weeks, even if one of them is with three weeks, a situation that was avoided this year with the cancellation of Russia. Two of them will be transcontinental with the United States as the protagonisttraveling from Azerbaijan for the Miami GP in April, and from Las Vegas to Abu Dhabi in November.
In total, the calendar will have 10 european rounds (including Azerbaijan), six rounds in the Americas and eight in Australasia, divided between the four in the Middle East and the remaining four in Pacific countries. In total, 8 months and 3 weeks of competition, occupying 24 of the 39 weekends that comprise them. Formula 1’s expansionist path continues, as the human and sustainability limits of growth where the dollar, for now, weighs more are explored.