Azerbaijan Grand Prix 2026: Saturday Race, Start Time and Baku Schedule
The 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix runs September 24 to 26 at the Baku City Circuit, and for the first time in its history the race is on a Saturday. Lights out is 15:00 local time on September 26, which is 13:00 CEST, 12:00 BST and 7 a.m. ET, over 51 laps of the 6.003 km street layout. The move off Sunday avoids a clash with Azerbaijan's day of national mourning. Round 15 of 23 arrives with Kimi Antonelli leading the drivers' championship and Mercedes well clear of Ferrari. Sources: Formula1.com, Motorsport.com, RaceFans, RacingNews365.
The context
Baku races on a Saturday, for the first time in its history
Formula 1 returns to the Baku City Circuit on September 24 to 26, 2026, and the schedule is the first thing to know: the grand prix is on Saturday, not Sunday. The race had originally been placed on Sunday September 27, which is Azerbaijan’s Remembrance Day, the national day of mourning for those killed in the 44-day Nagorno-Karabakh conflict of 2020. Rather than run a motor race through it, the promoter and Formula 1 moved the entire weekend forward by 24 hours. Practice runs on Thursday, qualifying on Friday afternoon, the race on Saturday at 15:00 local, which is 13:00 CEST, 12:00 BST and 7 a.m. ET.
The circuit itself has not changed, and it remains one of the strangest on the calendar. 6.003 km, 20 corners, anti-clockwise, 51 laps. The lap contains a stretch of roughly 2.2 km at full throttle along the Caspian seafront, and it also contains the passage through the old town between turns 8 and 12, where the track narrows to about seven and a half metres between medieval castle walls. No other venue asks a team to set up a car for both of those things in the same afternoon. The traditional Baku compromise is to run low downforce, live with a nervous car through the castle section, and hope the straight-line speed pays for it.
What is genuinely new is what happens on that straight. DRS no longer exists. The 2026 regulations replaced it with active aerodynamics, where cars move between a high-downforce corner mode and a low-drag straightline mode, on top of a power unit that has dropped the MGU-H and pushed the MGU-K from 160 to 470 bhp. Energy deployment and recovery over a two-kilometre full-throttle run is precisely the scenario engineers have worried about all year, and Baku is where the theory meets a wall. Nobody has raced a 2026 car here.
The championship context is lopsided. Kimi Antonelli left Monza on 267 points, 66 clear of teammate George Russell, with Mercedes on 468 in the constructors’ championship against Ferrari’s 346 and McLaren’s 287. Baku is round 15 of 23, and the Gran Premio de Espana in Madrid on September 13 lands before it, so those numbers will have moved by the time the cars reach Azerbaijan. A 66-point lead with ten rounds left is a strong position rather than a finished one, and Baku is historically the circuit least inclined to respect a strong position.
Sources: Formula1.com, Motorsport.com, RaceFans, RacingNews365, Oversteer48, ESPN, Wikipedia.
People also ask
True or false?
September 26 at 15:00 local, moved off Sunday to avoid the national day of mourning on the 27th. (Motorsport.com)
It was moved to avoid Azerbaijan's Remembrance Day for the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. (Motorsport.com, RaceFans)
It was removed for the new regulations and replaced by active aero, with a corner mode and a straightline mode. (Formula1.com)
The old town passage around turns 8 to 12 pinches to roughly seven and a half metres between castle walls. (Formula1.com)
It is one of the longest at 6.003 km, but Spa is longer at over 7 km. (Formula1.com)
He led by 66 points after Monza with ten rounds to run, and Madrid comes first. Commanding, not arithmetic. (RacingNews365)
It has produced plenty of passes, but active aero replaces DRS this year and nobody has raced these cars in Baku yet. (Formula1.com)