Starting with Baku this Saturday, F1 embarks on a triple-header over three consecutive weekends, moving on to Sepang on 4 October and Singapore on 11 October. The forecast for Baku is clear and dry all week, with highs in the mid-20s Celsius. There are 83 points on offer across the three events, and Cadillac, in its first season, admits the run puts "significant pressure" on the whole team.
Baku: practice Thursday, qualifying Friday, race Saturday
Because Sunday 27 September is a national day of remembrance in Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijan GP race has been brought forward a day to Saturday. Here is the schedule compiled by Sky Sports, converted to local time and UTC (local minus four hours).
| Session | Day | Local | UTC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Practice 1 | Thu 24/9 | 12:30 | 08:30 |
| Practice 2 | Thu 24/9 | 16:00 | 12:00 |
| Practice 3 | Fri 25/9 | 12:30 | 08:30 |
| Qualifying | Fri 25/9 | 16:00 | 12:00 |
| Race | Sat 26/9 | 15:00 | 11:00 |
The weather is expected to be "warm and dry" all week, with highs in the mid-20s. Sky Sports describes Baku as an incident-prone circuit, pointing to the Turn 1 braking zone, where Red Bull team-mates Verstappen and Ricciardo collided in 2018, and the Turn 8–9 "castle section", just 7.6m wide between the barriers.
Dates and tyre allocations for the three events
| Event | Dates | Hard | Medium | Soft |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Azerbaijan GP (Baku) | 24–26/9, race Sat 26/9 | C3 | C4 | C5 |
| Bahrain GP (held at Sepang) | 2–4/10 | C2 | C3 | C4 |
| Singapore GP (sprint) | 9–11/10 | C3 | C4 | C5 |
The official name of the Sepang event is the "Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix". With F1 and the FIA deciding to stage the Bahrain race at Sepang, Malaysia returns to the calendar for the first time since 2017. F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said "Sepang holds a special place in the history of F1". Singapore runs the sprint format, adding 8 sprint points to the 75 for the grand prix.
Pirelli has chosen "the three softest compounds" for the street circuits of Baku and Singapore. Sepang, it says, puts "a medium level of stress on the tyres by the standards of the whole calendar"; taking into account the abrasive asphalt, which has not been resurfaced since 2017, it avoided a harder combination in order to "narrow the lap-time gap between one and two stops and encourage a variety of strategies".
The toll of three weeks in a row
"Back-to-back flyaways in the last few months of the season put significant pressure on a racing team," said Cadillac team principal Marcin Budkowski. According to BVM Sports, the pressure extends beyond the travelling crew to the people at base who build and support the cars. For a first-season team, it amounts to a stress test of whether its growing infrastructure can sustain a full season while it keeps developing the current car. Cadillac is bringing several aerodynamic upgrades to Baku, and Sergio Perez gets Ferrari's latest-spec power unit.
It is a similar story for leaders Mercedes. The W17's major upgrade, its first since Canada in May, arrives in Malaysia. Team principal Toto Wolff said "we have to get through one more race in Baku", adding that he is not certain the new package will work on track. Kimi Antonelli leads by 81 points with eight wins from 14 races. Once Singapore wraps up in three weeks, six rounds will remain.
Sources
- Sky Sports — Azerbaijan GP 2026: Saturday race dates, schedule, Baku weather, UK start time
- Pirelli — Tyre compound selections for Baku, Sepang and Singapore
- BVM Sports — Cadillac braced for 'significant pressure' of F1 triple-header
- Formula1.com — Formula 1 and FIA confirm Malaysia will join 2026 calendar as host venue for Bahrain Grand Prix
- Sky Sports — Why Azerbaijan-Malaysia-Singapore triple header will shape the rest of the 2026 title race