Formula 1's history of spring breaks. Plus: No Indian GP return for 2027

Share full articlePrime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic’s F1 newsletter. Sign up here to receive Prime Tire directly in your inbox twice a week during the season and weekly in the offseason. Welcome back to Prime Tire, where today I’m starting to count down the days until 2026 Formula 1 action returns with the Miami Grand Prix. Race day at Hard Rock Stadium is now 20 days away, with the gap in races coming thanks to the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia events. But, as I’ll be covering in your inbox today, such a gap isn’t completely out of the ordinary in F1 history. I’m Alex, and Luke Smith will be along later. That gap between the 2026 Japanese and Miami races started at 36 days. But in F1 years gone by, whole (annual) seasons could pass between events. Take the 1953 F1 campaign.  For the first time in the world championship’s early years, which started in 1950, the first race took place outside of Europe. And it did so much earlier than the 1950-1952 start dates in May, with the Argentine GP in Buenos Aires taking place on Jan. 18, 1953. The next race — around the statistical quirk of the Indianapolis 500, which was included on the F1 calendar from 1950 to 1960 but featured barely any F1 drivers — took place at Zandvoort in the Netherlands on June 7. That’s a 141-day gap. This became the F1 calendar’s early arrangement for the rest of the 1950s — although the spring gap was slightly reduced when the Monaco GP was established in what would become its traditional May slot in 1955. And Monaco hosted the 1959 season opener when the Argentine race was canceled that year. In 1965, East London in South Africa (renamed as KuGompo City in February 2026, and not the part of the UK capital where I grew up) later brought F1 racing back to January. And on New Year’s Day, no less, with a 150-day gap to Monaco then following. But the Prince George Circuit didn’t hold on for long, as the Kyalami track, situated north of Johannesburg, took over as South African GP host in 1967. After 1968, it moved to a March slot that looks much more like the well-established early-spring season opener F1 knows now. But that wasn’t the last January season opener, as Kyalami’s later bouncing around the calendar (it would have races in October as well as March) included the 1982 season opener back in January one last time. Argentina would return to the F1 schedule in the 1970s and resume the January season openers, with Brazil taking this slot in 1976. Through the 1980s, March season starts really became the norm that we know today. The standardization of F1’s calendar reflected how business needs took ever more focus, as the championship professionalized through its initial decades. And today, the season-opening slot is a big-money item F1 currently is dividing between Australia and (the expected return of) the Middle East. As we covered last September, F1 has rushed to lock races into long-term contracts for the next generation, as it wanted to ensure stability with regular guaranteed hosting-fee income and avoid financial shocks — such as when the calendar had to be urgently reshaped during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. That intense focus on long-term planning makes me think F1 might opt to try to really make a splash when the 2026 season gets going again in Miami.  New engine rules are currently under discussion, so that reset factor might well be highlighted by the championship’s promoter, Formula One Management. And then there’s the Miami GP itself — over the years, there’s been an LL Cool J race introduction ceremony the drivers rather resented, a surprise visit to the grid from President Donald Trump and that joyful Lego car race last year. We’ll find out what fireworks are being planned for F1’s racing return soon enough, but for now, I’ll hand over to Luke for more calendar chat. Any F1 quiet period is ripe for rumor and speculation to crop up across social media, with one such topic this week being a possible revival of the Indian GP. F1 raced in India from 2011-13 at the Buddh International Circuit, only for a tax dispute to cause the track to drop from the calendar. The circuit has been used sparingly ever since by international championships. MotoGP staged one race there in 2024, but has not returned. But some quotes from India’s sports minister Mansukh Mandaviya, who claimed there was a push to get the Indian GP back on the F1 calendar for 2027, put the topic in the spotlight. India is a big market for F1. Just last year, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali told me in an interview that he saw Asia as holding even greater potential for the championship than it does already, making specific mention of India. But he said there was a need to first build the “culture of motorsport” to help grow the fan base there. And so a return is still some way off. Such projects take an enormous amount of time and effort to make a reality, even if a track already exists. Thailand and Rwanda — two countries that are looking to become future F1 hosts — realistically won’t be viable venues until the end of the 2020s at the very earliest. So, although there may be hope for some over a return to India, realistically, it’s not on right now. As former F1 driver-turned-TV pundit Karun Chandhok wrote on X, it would be 2029 or 2030 at the very earliest, given the work required. As has probably become obvious in my PT sends, I do love a sporting crossover involving F1 people — see the soccer/F1 combinations from two weeks ago. In the last few days, Rory McIlroy’s triumph in the 90th edition of the Masters has dominated sports headlines. And, thanks to Luke, there was an F1 crossover slice to take in at the same time. Back at the Japanese GP, McLaren driver Lando Norris positively lit up when informed The Athletic was dedicating a whole interview to his golfing exploits (“Best. Interview. Ever!” was Luke’s retelling of the 2025 world champion’s exclamation at Suzuka). And I was hooked from the line: “Norris, hungover and sleepless, and with a recovery score of 1 percent on his Whoop wristband, boarded a plane and made it to Augusta.” Because for me, that fills in what happened in the hours after Norris had made his big F1 breakthrough in winning the 2024 Miami GP (below). You can really chart McLaren’s rise to the 2025 world title double from that intriguing race. After winning it ahead of Max Verstappen, Norris had bounced into the news conference room in the Miami Dolphins locker room at Hard Rock Stadium still positively stinking of the podium champagne spraying. Most regular visitors to such hallowed F1 ground learn to have a change of overalls waiting so they don’t go on reeking of F1’s particular scent of success … Anyway, as Luke explains, the partying didn’t stop for Norris that night, even with a tee time at Augusta slotted in for the following morning. “It was so hot, man. It was hard to recollect everything,” the 26-year-old Norris said of his hangover, before going on to explain that he played a second, better round after a night of recovery sleep at Augusta’s accommodation. Even if golf isn’t your thing, do check out the full piece here. It’s a good way to further understand Norris’ character. And, if it is your thing, you’ll be pleased (and probably already know) that golf is very popular with the current crop of F1 drivers. Norris was introduced to the game by Carlos Sainz when they were McLaren teammates in 2019-2020. 🇲🇨 Charles Leclerc is still speaking like a driver committed to seeing things out with Ferrari, even as it seems the Scuderia’s long title drought will go on this year. In this piece on F1’s official website, Leclerc said: “Ferrari is family and a team that I’ve always loved and dreamed of driving for since I was a kid, and this hasn’t changed one bit since I joined the team in 2019.” ‼️ The FIA has banned a trick (inevitably about engine electrical energy systems) that Mercedes and Red Bull had been using at the end of qualifying laps early this season to gain fractions of a second over rivals. 💥 And F1’s official YouTube channel this week released a glorious 17-minute montage of contentious overtakes — imagine the social media outrage if many of them happened in 2026 … 📫 Love Prime Tire? Check out The Athletic’s other newsletters. Spot the pattern. 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