Canada used to be Formula 1’s outlier.
After bouncing around the globe, F1’s world championship would settle into the European season only to face a baffling trip across the Atlantic to Montreal and then heading back again.
For a sport keen to cut down on its carbon footprint, such an anomaly left deep marks.
The 2025 calendar illustrated the problem clearly. F1 headed to Montreal from Barcelona on June 1, contested the Canadian Grand Prix on June 15, and flew straight back to Austria the following weekend.
Europe to North America and straight back was a transatlantic round trip that sat uncomfortably against the sport’s 2030 net zero ambitions.
In 2026, that has changed. The Lenovo Canadian Grand Prix moves from its traditional June slot to May 24, following Miami on May 3 – the first time the two North American races have been placed consecutively.
It is the earliest Canada has ever appeared on the F1 calendar, and the most significant single scheduling decision the sport has made in its pursuit of net zero.
The numbers back that up. But the story behind them took years to arrive.
Ellen Jones, F1’s Head of ESG, joined the sport in 2022 with the Canada problem already firmly on her radar.
Logistics and travel account for the bulk of F1’s emissions profile, and the levers available to address them are well defined – the distance travelled, the volume of kit and people moving between races, and the mode of transport used.
“With the switch in Canada this year, we get multiple gains,” she told Sector.
“Not only are we able to reduce the distance travelled from reducing a transatlantic flight loop, so that speaks for itself, it’s very visual, but we also are able to change the mode that it travels in.
“So the kit that needs to go from Miami to Montreal is able to go by road and rail freight. It’s a really brilliant combination of the work that we’ve been doing across all three levers throughout our work with logistics, and it can help showcase that within the calendar.”
Set against the sport’s 2024 annual footprint – the most recent full year of data available – the Canada move alone accounts for a reduction of nearly 3% of F1’s total emissions.
For a global sport operating across 24 race weekends on five continents, that is a significant figure to attach to one scheduling decision.
“What was a concept in ’22 is now a reality in ’26 and it builds on the work across the business to make these changes,” added Jones.
Canada did not arrive in isolation. It is part of a pattern of calendar adjustments F1 has been making since it set its net zero targets, each one dependent on existing contracts reaching their renewal point and new terms being negotiated with sustainability built in from the start.
What we’ve been able to achieve this year is have a consolidated European season. Everything goes by trucks or is within the regional hubs.
Ellen Jones
Qatar moved alongside Abu Dhabi, Azerbaijan shifted into a September slot, Japan moved from the end of the season to April – but Canada is the latest, and the most impactful.
“It’s absolutely been a multi-year, multi-stakeholder effort,” Jones said.
“That’s why you see these changes having happened sequentially. These have all happened over years because the contracts are on different timelines.”
The Canada move also completes a second significant piece of work on the 2026 calendar – one that Jones is equally clear about. “This is a big one for us,” she said.
“What we’ve been able to achieve this year is have a consolidated European season. Everything goes by trucks or is within the regional hubs.
“Our trucks are powered by HVO, which is a biofuel that further helps reduce the emissions for those races.”
The European season now operates as a self-contained freight network running on low-emission road transport rather than air freight.
With Canada placed ahead of the European rounds rather than interrupting them, the two achievements are directly connected and together they represent the most substantial logistics progress the sport has made since setting its 2030 target.
“As we continue to improve our logistics and give ourselves more options through regional hubs, through seafreight, through the continued investment in our remote broadcast, that could open up future opportunities for the calendar,” Jones explained.
“What we’re trying to do is continue to reduce our emissions, but also continue to give us multiple ways to achieve fantastic calendar events and a product overall.
“What’s really fun about my job is I’m successful when a topic gets owned by another team. You could have interviewed our chief of race promotion, our director of logistics, and they would have been able to give you all this information.
“That’s what success looks like because we’re able to talk strategically about what we want to achieve from a sustainability perspective.”
