2018 Calendars: Formula 2

2018 FIA Formula 2 Championship Schedule

 

Google/iCal Calendar links:   ICAL  -or-  HTML

For more championships click here.

*As at 1 January 2018*

2018 Formula 2 Championship

All rounds support the FIA Formula 1 World Championship at the European rounds (except for Hockenheim), plus Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.

Feature race on Saturday afternoon including a pit stop;
Sprint race on Sunday morning with no scheduled stops;

Date	Circuit	Location	Country
7-8 Apr	Bahrain International Circuit	Sakhir	Bahrain
28-29 Apr	Baku	Baku	Azerbaijan
12-13 May	Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya	Barcelona	Spain
26-27 May	Monaco	Monaco	Monaco
23-24 Jun	Circuit Paul Ricard	Le Castellet	France
30 Jun – 1 Jul	Red Bull Ring	Spielberg	Austria
7-8 Jul	Silverstone	Towcester	United Kingdom
28-29 Jul	Hungaroring	Budapest	Hungary
25-26 Aug	Spa-Francorchamps	Francorchamps	Belgium
1-2 Sep	Autodromo Monza	Milan	Italy
29-30 Sep	Sochi Autodrom	Sochi	Russia
24-25 Nov	Yas Marina Circuit	Abu Dhabi	United Arab Emirates

What’s Changed?

New or Returning Events:

• Le Castellet (Paul Ricard), France.
• Sochi, Russia.

Deleted Events:

• Jerez standalone event.

Summary

All rounds this year are in support Formula 1. The standalone non-F1 event at Jerez is removed from the schedule.

Sochi returns to the calendar after two years away, it previously made two visits under the GP2 Series banner.

Paul Ricard (Le Castellet) marks the first ever visit for this series under GP2 or Formula 2 names and the “original” Formula 2 never raced there, though the MSV-operated FIA Formula 2 visited in 2012.

In 2018 there are 12 rounds of two races each round, that’s one race meeting (two races) more than in 2017 which was itself a slightly shorter season than GP2’s usual.

Comment

I never understood the logic of the standalone Jerez race, the selling point for F2 is that it races under the noses of F1 team managers and talent spotters, so holding a late-season potential title decider away from them – and away from the F1 press pack – never made sense to me. A good choice to remove that odd round.

Also good to have a French round back in play.

Racing at Sochi instead of Hockenheim strikes me as a strange choice. Although Germany is in the traditional heartland, neither it nor Russia had a full-time driver in 2017 Formula 2. The thing I don’t understand is adding a round so far away, when the logistics and costs of a race closer to home would’ve helped the teams.

That’s not necessarily a critcism of Sochi, you could pick Sochi, Baku, Abu Dhabi or Bahrain and run Germany instead of any one of them. I suppose on the flip side, Hockenheim is the 4th of 5 F1 GPs in the space of six weeks so in that regard it does save the teams! But in that case, France being the first of that run, why not run twin back-to-backs? Austria-GB, then Germany-Hungary.