LONDON:  Formula 1 on Friday announced that their 2021 season with 23 races will start in Australia on March 19 and finish in Abu Dhabi in early December, and feature the first-ever World Championship race in Saudi Arabia.

With 23 races, the new schedule will be the longest in the history of the world championship. The announcement follows an unprecedented year for Formula 1 in which the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a revised 2020 calendar of 17 races, as F1 became the first international sport to resume its season.

Earlier, the F1 released a provisional calendar for the 2021 season. The FIA had said it expects fans to return for the 2021 season and for the calendar to look similar to the originally planned 2020 season. Chase Carey, Chairman and CEO of Formula 1, had said: “We are pleased to announce the 2021 Formula 1 provisional calendar after extensive conversations with our promoters, the teams and the FIA.

We are planning for 2021 events with fans that provide an experience close to normal and expect our agreements to be honored.”

“We have proven that we can safely travel and operate our races and our promoters increasingly recognize the need to move forward and manage the virus. In fact, many hosts actually want to use our event as a platform to show the world they are moving forward,” he had added. (ANI)