Seven-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton will go down as the final winner of the Russian Grand Prix after Formula 1 announced that not only will they not replace this year’s Russian Grand Prix with another race, but they will also permanently cancel the Russian race after Russian president Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. Hamilton won the last race contested in Sochi in 2021 and collected his 100th overall victory in the process.
F1 had explored possible options of replacing the race with a race in Qatar or hosting a second race in Singapore – but neither option was feasible and the idea was abandoned and the spot on the calendar will be left empty.
In Qatar’s case, the option to replace the Russian race on the September 25 date ran into two major obstacles – the heat in September being more than F1 would like to conduct a race and the date being too close to the beginning of the men’s football World Cup – being hosted by Qatar from November 21-December 18, 2022.
For Singapore, the problem was more logistics as a proposal to hold a day race before the traditional night race would shut down the city for two consecutive weeks, which was deemed not feasible.