F1 fans have been handed a bonus ahead of this week’s ticket sale for the 2026 British Grand Prix with the news that Silverstone will host a sprint race for the first time in five years.
The iconic circuit in Northamptonshire hosted the first-ever F1 sprint race back in 2021, won by Max Verstappen, but has not hosted the shortened format – which results in four competitive sessions across the weekend and just one hour of practice – in the years that have followed.
But the 2026 British Grand Prix (3-5 July) will host a sprint weekend, which could positively impact ticket sales ahead of this Friday’s general sale at 10am.
Elsewhere, Canada and Singapore will host a sprint race for the first time in 2026, while Zandvoort will also hold the shortened format as F1 says goodbye to the Dutch Grand Prix next year. China and Miami have been retained as sprint race venues, while Brazil drops off the list for the first time. Belgium, Austin and Qatar have also lost their sprint race hosting rights from this year’s list.
F1 chief Stefano Domenicali has spoken recently about increasing the number of sprint races in the future and The Independent understands there are active conversations with all key stakeholders in the sport about creating more events packed with competitive sessions from 2027.
However, given new engine and chassis regulations next year, F1 has opted to stick with six sprint races for 2026, representing 25% of the total race weekends.
Last year, statistics show that television viewership for sprint weekends was, on average, 10% higher than non-sprint weekends. Most notably, this year, Lewis Hamilton claimed his first ‘win’ for Ferrari at the sprint race in China back in March.
The sprint was first introduced in 2021 as a way of making more sessions over the course of the weekend competitive, with the target of driving interest in F1.
In 2021 and 2022 there were three sprints a year, but that number was doubled in 2023 – a tally F1 has not changed since.
The order of play sees the ‘sprint qualifying’ take place on Friday afternoon instead of a second practice session, with traditional qualifying in its usual spot on Saturday afternoon. It means there is just one practice session over the course of the weekend.
The result of the Saturday morning sprint – a 100km dash, roughly a third of the distance of the grand prix – does not impact the grid for Sunday. Points are awarded to the top-eight finishers, from eight points down to one.
Sprint qualifying follows the same Q1-Q2-Q3 format but the session times are shorter than traditional qualifying: SQ1 is 12 minutes, SQ2 is 10 minutes and SQ3 is eight minutes.
2026 sprint race calendar:
- Chinese Grand Prix – 13-15 March
- Miami Grand Prix – 1-3 May
- Canadian Grand Prix – 22-24 May
- British Grand Prix – 3-5 July
- Dutch Grand Prix – 21-23 August
- Singapore Grand Prix – 9-11 October
