Melbourne Revs Up: 2025 F1 Season Opener Confirmed
Mar.22 - The buzz in the Melbourne paddock is that Albert Park will return to its former post as the opening Formula 1 race of the season from 2025.
More recently, Bahrain - also the scene of pre-season testing - had become the more familiar opener each season. This year, the Bahrain GP was paired with Saudi Arabia, in part so they were complete before the Islamic month of fasting and prayer, otherwise known as Ramadan, kicked off.
But next year, Ramadan will start at the end of February, meaning it now makes sense to restore Australia as the first race of 2025.
However, De Telegraaf correspondent Erik van Haren reported from Melbourne that it is rumoured that Bahrain will still host pre-season testing a week or two before Melbourne.
"Formula 1 doesn't want to confirm the news at this time," he said.
However, there are hints that Melbourne will definitely be the first race next year. First, the event's contract through 2035 stipulates that at least five Australian grands prix in the new deal must be season openers as a "guaranteed minimum".
And organisers of the increasingly-popular Adelaide Motorsport Festival - which hosted names including Damon Hill, Gunther Steiner, Valtteri Bottas and many other F1 regulars just a week ago - have now named March 1-2 for the 2025 event.
That would make March 7-9 as the logical season-opening date for the 2025 Australian GP.
"International and Australian motorsport stars will once again come to Adelaide on the weekend of March 1 and 2 in 2025, for what will be a bumper weekend of on-track action and off-track activities," the Adelaide Motorsport Festival declared.
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Both the Bahrain & Saudi Arabian GPs could simply take place earlier in February because no rule against racing in February exists in the first place, so just because F1 races haven't occurred in February for a long time doesn't mean that couldn't happen again, just like with December until 2019-20.
Contractual clause about at least five season-openers got abandoned later, from what I read once, so that isn't the case anymore, not that this disallows being the season-opener again.
Holding pre-season testing & race separately with one or more events between would be somewhat pointless, though.
All these things will only become formal once the race calendar comes out later this year, so only speculation or preliminary at this point.