All 24 circuits on Formula 1’s packed 2025 grand prix calendar · RaceFans

What makes a great venue for a Formula 1 race?

The world championship takes in a wide range of courses: Permanent tracks and closed streets; Long straights and complex sequences; Super-fast corners and tight chicanes.

What combination of these adds up to the ultimate Formula 1 track? Does it only matter if they provide a varied race with lots of overtaking, or does it matter how challenging the track is for drivers?

The world championship consisted of a record-breaking 24 rounds last year. It will repeat every one of them in 2025. With no substantial changes to the layouts expected, here is RaceFans’ ranking of every current F1 venue. Each has been graded on the challenge provided by its layout, the quality of racing it produces (partly based on RaceFans’ Rate the Race scores), and how its audience and location contribute to the atmosphere of the event.

24: Yas Marina

Yas Marina was built with a money-no-object budget on an artificial island. Its designers wasted their blank canvas, producing a tedious, slow layout with vast, forgiving asphalt run-off areas and little driving challenge.

A 2021 overhaul deleted several of its worst corners, yet the layout still has little to commend it besides the novelty value of a pit lane exit which tunnels beneath the first corner. Had it not enjoyed the benefit of hosting several title-deciders, almost none of Yas Marina’s races would be memorable.

23: Losail International Circuit

Similar to Bahrain in terms of surroundings, albeit with a quicker, more challenging layout. Possibly too challenging for F1’s tyres, as all three of its races have seen either unexpected punctures or, in 2023, emergency measures to avoid them. That makes it reasonable to question whether modern F1 cars are actually compatible with this track.

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22: Miami International Autodrome

Liberty Media’s many attempts to hold a race in downtown Miami were thwarted. Clearly desperate to make good on its pledge to bring F1 back to Florida, it signed off this insipid course which winds its way around the grounds of the Hard Rock Stadium.

The ghastly turn 14-15 chicane looks like something from a late-era Champ Car street track and surely ranks as F1’s worst corner. None of its three grands prix to date generated much action, and the race is best known for outrageous food prices and the much-derided ‘fake marina’ of its inaugural year.

21: Bahrain International Circuit

The first glimpse of the Bahrain International Circuit just over 20 years ago was a depressing sign of how far F1 had lowered the bar in its eagerness to court wealthy race promoters. Now the world championship was racing on a scaled-up go-kart track in the middle of a desert. It proved a sign of things to come.

While no one would describe its layout as challenging, it has at least produced some good races, though not last year. Its transition to a night race in 2014 has helped to mask its less than telegenic, ex-camel farm surroundings.

20: Jeddah Corniche Circuit

Jeddah is a faux street track, laid out on purpose-built roads within the city. While it has some impressively quick corners, it opens with a clear example of terrible design: a desperately slow chicane with an easily cheated run-off area.

F1 drivers are somewhat conflicted about Jeddah, enjoying its high speeds but also regularly describing it as the most dangerous track – and not just because of the missiles landing nearby.

19: Baku City Circuit

This isn’t a racing track layout, it’s a tour bus route intended to show off local landmarks. However the course becomes more interesting after the first sector and the high speeds make for a worthwhile challenge.

Baku has a reputation for producing crash-strewn races which it only occasionally lives up to, at least as far as F1 is concerned.

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18: Shanghai International Circuit

China’s world championship venue is an oddball affair. It features some genuinely unusual corners but lacks flow, stopping and starting. It’s built on an entirely different scale to most tracks, massively wide in places with an enormous back straight.

Modern F1 cars can at least race reasonably well there, and F1’s long absence due to the Covid-19 pandemic does not seem to have diminished local enthusiasm for the race.

17: Circuit de Catalunya

‘Familiarity breeds contempt’ was the aphorism which captured F1’s relationship with the home of the Spanish Grand Prix for many years. As teams regularly tested at the Circuit de Catalunya, they generally arrived with their cars well-tuned to the track.

A couple of revisions in the 2000s didn’t help: Turn 10 was tightened in a futile attempt to aid overtaking, and a chicane added at the end of the lap for safety reasons. These changes have since been reversed and its layout is better for it, but it looks likely to disappear from F1’s schedule after next year when the race moves to Madrid. It might be thought of more fondly once it’s been replaced with yet another street circuit.

16: Hungaroring

The Hungaroring was derided when the compact, winding course joined the calendar in 1986, at a time when F1 still visited the monstrously fast Osterreichring a short distance away. It’s a mark of the standard of later circuits that its reputation has improved, though the track itself also benefited from positive revisions in 1989 and 2003. An all-new paddock will greet teams this year.

15: Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez

The Mexican Grand Prix promoters are blessed with an ideal venue for their round of the world championship – not many metropolises have FIA grade one permanent racing circuits within their environs. However the track’s refurbishment for its return to the championship after a 23-year absence was a case study in how to ruin a circuit.

The mighty Peraltada, scene of one of F1’s greatest overtaking moves of all time, was bypassed in favour of a slow tour through a former baseball stadium. It couldn’t be made safe for modern F1 cars, they said, but just a few years later they were racing at Jeddah.

Every corner on the track was tightened. No doubt the designers faced a challenge working within the limits they had, but did corners combinations like two-three and four-five-six-seven really need to be so excessively slow? Mexico’s enthusiastic fans deserved much better.

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14: Singapore

F1’s original night race was also its most gruelling event for many years, though it has potentially lost that crown to Losail. The 2023 layout tweak also took the edge off it – in fact, it took four edges off it, creating a longer straight near the end of the lap.

Arguably this has diminished the track’s character somewhat, making it less brutally tough over a grand prix distance, without adding much to it. However it remains one of few true street tracks on the F1 calendar, and one where overtaking is just about possible. Another revamp is expected next year.

13: Las Vegas Strip Circuit

F1’s newest venue has only held two races and might only hold one more. Although its layout is simple, this gives it the rare characteristic of being one of the few truly high-speed venues F1 visits: A Hockenheim with casinos instead of trees.

12: Red Bull Ring

The reputation of the Red Bull Ring can’t help but suffer by comparison to the daunting Osterreichring which preceded it. However, the track has a lot to commend it: Good opportunities for racing, genuinely quick corners and spectacular scenery. The track operators are also finally getting on top of the track limits problem which blighted it for far too long.

11: Albert Park

Melbourne’s scenic parkland circuit has always been tricky with little room for error. Its well-judged overhaul, first used in 2022, amplified those qualities, increasing the speed of several corners and deleting one of its slower bends. Passing remains tricky, but this is nonetheless one of F1’s best temporary tracks.

Happily, it has been reinstated as the season-opening race this year, a role which suits it to a tee.

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10: Monaco

Of course Monaco does not deserve a place among the 10 best circuits in terms of the quality of racing it produces. When it’s dry, the Monaco Grand Prix is usually a procession, and a quirk of F1’s rules made it even worse last year.

But the challenge of this impossibly narrow and twisty circuit is truly unique. Street tracks like this have to be seen to grasp just how ludicrous it is that drivers tackle them at F1 speeds. Some demands the Monte-Carlo course must be overhauled to suit modern F1, or dispensed with entirely; on the contrary, it’s the excessively wide and heavy cars which need to change.

9: Imola

Imola will forever be associated with the double tragedy of 1994, following which the track was emasculated with yet more chicanes. However some of its high-speed character was restored prior to its return to the F1 calendar in 2020.

It remains a gorgeous venue, the cars winding their way through the Parco delle Acque Minerali. The crowd invariably reserve the loudest cheers for their beloved Ferraris.

8: Zandvoort

If the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez suffered an ugly facelift in 2015, Zandvoort enjoyed much more sensitive treatment six years later. Already much changed from the version F1 previously raced at in the eighties, much of its character was retained through an intelligent and sensitive updating, including the addition of two steeply banked turns.

The rapid, undulating corners in the middle of the track are its highlight, though it is probably still too narrow in places for F1 cars to race well. Sadly, they won’t return after next year.

7: Circuit Gilles Villeneuve

The Isle Notre Dame in Montreal barely has enough room for a Formula 1-grade track. As a result, it has several compromises, not least its very awkward pit lane entrance.

But the track named for the late Gilles Villeneuve simply works, daring drivers to take just a little too much speed over its tricky kerbs and between its instantly punishing walls. It’s on the doorstep of a terrific city, too.

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6: Monza

Like Monaco, Monza is something of an anachronism, albeit a glorious one. It is still F1’s fastest circuit, and enjoys the benefit of a superb setting and passionate crowd.

Since the seventies, F1 has had to tame Monza’s extreme speeds using chicanes, there being insufficient room for larger run-offs at many of its corners. Although the Rettifilo is one of the most unappealing corners anywhere, it is the only thing to be said against this magnificent piece of the past.

5: Circuit of the Americas

Austin’s Formula 1 circuit is a glorious rebuke to the claim that no one builds good permanent racing facilities any more. From its steep climb after the start, through its sinuous and rapid first sector, and around the rapid turns 16-17-18, this is a hugely impressive course.

The tedious run through turns 12 to 15 is the only thing to be said against it. But even this should be improved this year, as the track operators are understood to be finally taking steps to toughen up the excessively generous run-off areas which F1 drivers have abused for years.

4: Interlagos

When the original Interlagos circuit was shortened for F1’s return in 1990, the designers hit upon a winning mixture of acceleration zones, corner speeds and gradient which make for both a challenging course and superb racing. The pit lane entrance is a bit sketchy, but that has been substantially improved by recent improvements.

Even when it doesn’t rain and there isn’t a championship left to decide, Interlagos often produces memorable races. The locals will have one of their own to cheer on this year, which should add to the atmosphere.

3: Silverstone

Few tracks have lasted as long or gone through as many changes as Silverstone while remaining in such good shape. Its last change in 2010 provoked some knee-jerk grumbles about the loss of Bridge, a corner which had already been toned down by the addition of a chicane. Its new sequence, though somewhat ponderous, has opened up further overtaking opportunities.

The rest of the track is thrillingly fast: Copse, Maggotts/Becketts and Stowe are incredible places to watch F1 cars show what they can do. Silverstone’s origins as an airfield make it nothing much to look at, but the racing and packed crowd usually makes up for that.

2: Suzuka

Few circuits inspire the kind of respect and reverence among F1 drivers that Suzuka does. The first sector is a dazzling sequence of high-speed switchback corners, and the challenge doesn’t let up from there until drivers reach the long straights at the end of the lap.

It’s had a few tweaks to tame some of its more extreme corners, notably 130R, which isn’t what it was. Passing isn’t easy either, and races can be processional, but Suzuka retains its capacity to impress.

The Japanese fans are enthusiastic, knowledgeable and turn up in huge numbers even when there isn’t a local driver on the grid.

1: Spa-Francorchamps

F1 last raced on the old, ‘monster’ Spa-Francorchamps in 1970. When it returned 13 years later, the circuit had been shortened and renovated but also much improved.

While majestic corners such as Eau Rouge were retained, others such as Pouhon were created. They remain over 40 years later, though the ever-improving capabilities of F1 cars and inevitable changes to run-off areas have lessened their challenge somewhat.

Even so, this is one of few circuits where F1 cars can truly impress us with their capabilities, and do so in a picturesque environment. Aside from the necessary evil of its ponderous final chicane, Spa is a masterpiece. Sadly, F1 will only visit it once every other year after 2027.

Over to you

How far do you agree or disagree with our ranking? Have your say in the comments.

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