Saudi Arabia's Jeddah Corniche Circuit has been handed the prize role of hosting the season opener in 2024, it has emerged.
The venue held its inaugural Grand Prix in in 2021 as the penultimate race of the season, but was moved up to second place on the schedule for 2022 and 2023 following on from the opening race in Bahrain.
Organisers of the Saudi Arabia GP had asked to move the race even earlier in the year for 2024 to avoid a clash with Ramadan religious observance, which in Saudi Arabia begins on Sunday 10 March and lasts until 8 April.
It means that the 2024 season will have to take place at the start of March, with March 3 the most likely date.
The dates for Ramadan will also see Australia resume its role as the season opener on at least four subsequent occasions during its current contract, which has just been extended to 2037.
The announcement from the Australian Grand Prix corporation stated: "Part of the deal will see Melbourne host the first race of the F1 season for at least four years between 2023 and 2037, with Saudi Arabia to host to the first race of the 2024 F1 season out of respect for Ramadan.”
Under the previous contract Australia had been expected to resume its former long-time role as season opener for 2024, before the request was made by the Saudi promoters.
Melbourne's Albert Park Circuit hosted the first Grand Prix of the year between 1996 and 2019, with only two exceptions in 2006 and 2010 when the honours went to Bahrain.
But the 2020 Australian GP was cancelled on the morning that Friday practice was due to take place, as a result of the COVID pandemic outbreak. The race was also forced off the schedule again in 2021 due to ongoing COVID counter-measures.
Austria held the first race of the delayed and truncated 2020 season, and since then Bahrain has been the curtain-raiser. Australia returned to the calendar in 2022 when it was the third race of the year behind Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Next year, Ramadan takes place from 22 March to 21 April. As a result, the Bahrain GP will be held on March 5 followed by Saudi Arabia on March 19.
Bahrain will also once again be the venue for pre-season testing in February, after F1 moved away from its long-standing arrangement to hold the sessions at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
Saudi Arabia signed a ten year contract in 2021 to host an F1 race, with plans for a change of venue from Jeddah's temporary street circuit to a permanent custom facility currently under construction in Qiddiyah in due course.
The running of this year's race was threatened by bomb strikes made by Yemen's Houthi rebels on a nearby oil storage facility located just 10 km away from the Jeddah circuit during Friday practice.
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