This year’s Formula 1 season has had the most races in the history of the sport to date at 22. But F1 has just released the provisional calendar for the 2022 season, and if everything stays as it is, it will top that with a record-breaking 23 races.
The season opener will take place in Bahrain, followed by races in Saudi Arabia, Australia, and Italy. After that there’s the inaugural Miami Grand Prix as the first of two races in the USA, followed by Spain, Monaco, Azerbaijan, Canada, the UK, Austria, France, and Hungary before the summer break. After returning from the break, the teams will head to Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy again, Russia, Singapore, Japan, the USA again, Mexico, Brazil, and Abu Dhabi.
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Some tracks like Australia, Canada, Singapore, and Japan are ones we’ll be seeing on the calendar again for the first time since 2019, while others like China won’t be making a return after departing from the COVID-19-induced calendar shakeups. The new-for-2021 Qatar race will sit 2022 out, as the country will be hosting the FIFA World Cup, but it will return in 2023 on a 10-year deal. That same year will also be the first year that the Russian GP will be held at St. Petersburg’s Igora Drive circuit, meaning 2022 will be the last year at the Sochi Autodrom, which has been hosting F1 since 2014.
There are seven double-headers and two triple-headers for 2022, as well as no gaps between race weekends greater than two weeks (aside from the month-long summer break), which means that while fans will get quite the treat in terms of entertainment, the drivers and teams will be extremely busy.
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McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has actually voiced his concerns on this in an interview with RacingNews365: “A very important topic is also the number of triple-headers. From my point of view, we should avoid completely again, to reduce the burden on our people, the triple-headers on the calendar. We should try to get through with avoiding any triple-headers, to be honest.”
With all that being said, the season will now end in mid-November instead of mid-December, which should help give everyone some more time to breathe before the start of the 2023 season.