Overview

• Practice in Baku will begin on Thursday with qualifying on Friday ahead of the race on Saturday to respect Azerbaijan’s national remembrance holiday.
• Three pre-season test sessions have been confirmed: a private test in Barcelona from January 26–30 and public tests in Sakhir on February 11–13 and 18–20.
• The Barcelona test will be closed to spectators and feature limited media coverage under its private designation.
• The expanded winter testing program addresses the challenge of a comprehensive technical regulation overhaul that requires teams to develop fundamentally new car designs.
• These calendar and testing tweaks draw on F1’s history of adapting race weekends and preparation schedules, from Monaco’s unique format to Ramadan Saturday races and the 2014 turbo-hybrid testing debut.