For the second year running the FIA has released a Formula 1 calendar with 21 races. Like last year, it remains to be seen if we’ll actually see all of those races take place.
As it stands the 2016 season is set to kick off in Australia on 3 April, with the Chinese Grand Prix to take place the following weekend.
Increasing the demand on the teams there will be another five back-to-back race weekends including: Bahrain and Russia, Britain and Austria, Germany and Hungary, Singapore and Malaysia, and USA and Mexico.
As you will see the German Grand Prix is back and is scheduled to be held at Hockenheim. Malaysia moves from its early season slot to the latter half of the year straight after the Singapore Grand Prix.
Finally, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix will make its debut in 2016 on 17 July, to be held on a 6km street circuit in the country’s capital Baku.
The full calendar is shown below.
| Round | Date | Grand Prix |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 April | AUSTRALIA (Melbourne) |
| 2 | 10 April | CHINA (Shanghai) |
| 3 | 24 April | BAHRAIN (Sakhir) |
| 4 | 1 May | RUSSIA (Sochi) |
| 5 | 15 May | SPAIN (Barcelona) |
| 6 | 29 May | MONACO (Monaco) |
| 7 | 12 June | CANADA (Montreal) |
| 8 | 26 June | BRITAIN (Silverstone) |
| 9 | 3 July | AUSTRIA (Red Bull Ring) |
| 10 | 17 July | AZERBAIJAN (Baku) |
| 11 | 31 July | GERMANY (Hockenheim) |
| 12 | 7 August | HUNGARY (Budapest) |
| 13 | 28 August | BELGIUM (Spa) |
| 14 | 4 September | ITALY (Monza) |
| 15 | 18 September | SINGAPORE (Marina Bay) |
| 16 | 25 September | MALAYSIA (Sepang) |
| 17 | 9 October | JAPAN (Suzuka) |
| 18 | 23 October | USA (Austin) |
| 19 | 30 October | MEXICO (Mexico City) |
| 20 | 13 November | BRAZIL (Interlagos) |
| 21 | 27 November | ABU DHABI (Yas Marina) |
3 replies on “F1 reveals bumper 21-race calendar for 2016”
How many viewers (fans) have they lost since removing it from free to air?
(Cluster fuck)
21 races is about 2-3 too many.
Reduce costs, reduce costs, reduce costs but hey let’s have more and more races!
More races means spreading the costs of design and production over more opportunities to get the cars seen in action and earning their keep for the sponsors. If the teams cannot find their own ways to operate more efficiently then perhaps the FIA needs to deal out a little tough love – perhaps banning in-race telemetry could be a good start.
Perhaps some expertise needs to be imported from NASCAR, where the teams have a season 42 weeks long with races on 39 of those weekends if they gain entry to both of the exhibition events. This proposed F1 schedule of 21 races in 35 weeks would be regarded as luxurious by those crews, especially when they are used to driving their own gear around the USA where F1 teams have a global logistics partner to do it for them.