Lewis Hamilton’s first season as a Ferrari driver will not be complimented by the return of the South African Grand Prix after the seven-time world champion’s dream race was omitted from the 2025 F1 calendar.
F1 claims to be a World Championship, but as Hamilton has often pointed out, there are currently no races on the African continent. The legendary Brit has been aiming to change this for many years now, pushing the sport’s leaders for a return to the Kyalami Circuit, which last held a Grand Prix back in 1993.
Speaking ahead of the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix last season, Hamilton explained: “There’s one more race we need and that’s going to be Africa. We have all the other continents and why not there? So that’s the one I’m working on pushing right now.”
This vision is supported by F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali who said, in 2022: “There are areas of the world that want to have Formula One, and I think that one area that we want to develop is the African area. We are a world championship, and that’s an area where we are not there.”
However, despite talks about a return to the calendar in 2024, this didn’t materialise and now another year has passed without the reintroduction of Kyalami as 2025’s schedule was revealed on Friday.
The most notable feature of the 2025 calendar is its season opener, with the Australian Grand Prix returning to the forefront of the calendar for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Since then, the Sakhir International Circuit has filled in as the season opener in the meantime whilst also hosting pre-season testing duties, but the Bahrain Grand Prix will now be round four of a 24-race schedule.
The season opener in Melbourne on 16 March will be the Chinese Grand Prix the following weekend. F1 will then head to Japan two weeks later, kicking off the first triple-header of the year.
While there are changes to the front end of the schedule, there is little change to the close of the season. Abu Dhabi remains the season finale and is part of a triple-header involving Las Vegas and Qatar.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix will once again be a Saturday race, although there will be no repeat of the scheduling for the 2024 races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, which were shifted to Saturdays due to Ramadan.
