Formula 1 is cutting every grand prix to 290 km in 2027
Fifteen kilometres is two laps of Spa, and F1 is giving them up
Formula 1 has agreed to cut the maximum length of every grand prix from 305 km to 290 km in 2027. Motorsport.com reports the proposal reached the teams by email last week and met broad agreement, and that the World Motorsport Council has yet to ratify it. Monaco, already a special case at 260 km, is likely to be trimmed as well. The cause is not television or safety. It is fuel.
The maximum distance falls from 305 km to 290 km
Every race on the calendar loses the same 15 km, rather than only the handful most likely to run short of fuel. Shortening just those events was the first idea, together with limiting how many laps a car may complete before it lines up on the pre-grid. A uniform cut across the season won out. Nothing is binding until the World Motorsport Council signs it off, but the teams have seen the proposal and did not push back.
The 2026 power unit splits its output 50:50, and drivers dislike it
This year's engine formula deleted the MGU-H and pushed the electrical side of the power unit from roughly 163 PS to 476 PS, while the V6 dropped from about 857 PS to 544 PS. The total still clears 1,000 PS, but half of it now has to be harvested before it can be spent. Drivers say the style that forces on them is counter-intuitive, and the swings in state of charge produce racing that yo-yos instead of flowing. Ferrari's season has shown how much the engine, not the aerodynamics, sets the order.
2027 moves the balance to 58:42, and 2028 to 60:40
The agreed correction hands the combustion engine a larger share: 58:42 next season, 60:40 the year after. A bigger combustion share needs more fuel, and fuel flow is now capped as energy rather than mass, at 3,000 MJ per hour above 10,500 rpm. More flow means more fuel on board. The original objection to a larger tank was that at least half the grid meant to carry its 2026 chassis over, which fell apart once teams accepted the aerodynamic changes would force new chassis anyway. Weight remains the objection, and the FIA is already patching this rule set elsewhere. So the race shrinks instead of the tank growing.
Fifteen kilometres costs Spa two laps and Monza two and a half
Set the cut against real circuits and it stops being an abstraction. Spa's lap measures 7.004 km, so 15 km is a little over two laps of it. Monza runs 5.793 km and Silverstone 5.891 km, which makes the same 15 km worth roughly two and a half laps at each. This year's Italian Grand Prix is scheduled for 53 laps and 306.720 km, and the British Grand Prix ran 52 laps and 306.198 km. Those are the figures that move, at every circuit, in the same direction.
The last time F1 shortened its races was 1958, also over fuel
Race lengths came down to 300 km or two hours, whichever arrived first, in the same season the sport made commercial petrol compulsory and pushed the alcohol-based brews out. Change what goes in the tank and the distance follows. Under the current rules the fuel is fully sustainable, and Ferrari will make the point at Monza this weekend by putting Sebastian Vettel in a Schumacher-era F2002 running on it. Nearly seventy years on, what the cars burn is again deciding how far they go.
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The 15 km is not the interesting part. The admission is. Formula 1 wrote an engine formula whose cars cannot comfortably cover a race distance that has stood, near enough unchanged, since 1958, and rather than change the engine it is changing the race. Each step of the correction, 58:42 next year and 60:40 the year after, walks back toward the combustion engine these rules were written to demote. A shorter grand prix is the cheapest way to buy time while that happens.
Here is the test worth keeping. When the 60:40 split and its larger fuel allowance arrive in 2028, the distance should return to 305 km. If it does not, 290 km was never an interim measure. And it answers the wrong complaint in any case: two laps at Spa, where Lando Norris set a 1:48.890 as the fastest lap this year, is about three and a half minutes less racing. It does not remove a single lift-and-coast.
