Williams Team Principle, James Vowles, offered his perspective on the 2026 F1 race calendar ahead of the Azerbaijan GP. The format for 2026 and onwards continues to be criticized and dissected. While the addition of more sprint races, and shorter races continues to be discussed. With F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali pushing for more “exciting” race weekends by removing free practice sessions and adding sprint races to engage a younger audience, the 2026 format remains undecided.
Vowles suggests two-day race weekends
Despite Domenicali’s push for a new format, drivers and team principles have found themselves disagreeing with his opinion. In an appearance on the Business of Sport podcast, James Vowles expressed that an increased amount of races is unneccessary. Still, the Briton offered his own perspective on the matter, suggesting that two-day race weekends could be a better format.
“I don’t think we have too many races, but I would not go above where we are at the moment because we’re asking people at home to be there for half a year. Half your weekends are [spent] watching Formula 1. I think that’s about the extreme end of where you can go to,”
“I would change [and] this is very much my opinion, I’ll put that out there, I would change to two-day weekends, I would do Saturday and Sunday,” the Team Principle continued.
“And here’s the reason why, we can do more at that point in time. I know I just said 24 [rounds] is the maximum, but I actually wouldn’t be concerned about the fact because we’ve given back Friday, which is one day.“
Vowles argued that while adding more races with the current format might not work, changing up how F1 is set up during the weekend could be the way to go. With everyone working long weekends at the tracks, increasing the amount of races could become too much. However, if the weekends were to be shorter, adding more races to might not be as big of a concern.
More variability but less predictable
The Brit continued on to explain why he believes his suggestion of two-day race weekends could work, stating:
“If you added another two race weekends in, you’d still be net in the same amount of time that you were previously.
“And I think we can commercialise it in a different way. But, more than that, I think the product will be better because we do a lot of practice at the moment. Now, if you force us, you get one hour before qualifying, and that’s it. That’s quite a different proposition. So, I think you’ll get more variability and more randomness that comes out of it.”
Vowles’ suggestion would indeed bring more variability and be more unpredictable. However, decreasing free practice sessions could prove to be a major issue. Practice allows for, not only the drivers, but also the engineers and mechanics to gather necessary data. These sessions help them prepare for Qualifying and the Race, so the removal of this could be detrimental. Still, as no changes have been confirmed, the 2026 format remains to be seen.
