The official video game of the 2020 F1 season will feature all 22 tracks in what should have been this year’s record-breaking season, despite the disruption to the calendar.

The first eight races on the 2020 F1 calendar have been cancelled or postponed. The Australian and Monaco grands prix will not be rescheduled, but buyers of the new game will still get to race on the Albert Park and Monaco circuits despite their absence from the real schedule.

“We’re still going to go with all 22 circuits which were originally part of the calendar,” Codemasters F1 franchise director Paul Jeal told RaceFans in an exclusive interview.

Along the postponed races are the two new additions to this year’s schedule, Hanoi and Zandvoort.

The British-based game developers were preparing to announce the first details of F1 2020 when the country went into lockdown due to the pandemic, forcing its staff to work from home.

“The most prudent thing to do is obviously just to see whether the impact of this is going to do anything,” said Jeal. “Some of the teams, for example, [are] going on their shutdown period now rather than what they would have done in August. It’s just a few little bits of that which you’ve got to factor into your planning, which wasn’t there originally. Hopefully it’s not too much longer before we before we make the announcement.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

How the 2020 F1 calendar has changed

Round Event Dates Notes 1 Australian Grand Prix Mar 13-15 Cancelled, will not be reschduled 2 Bahrain Grand Prix Mar 20-22 Cancelled, seeking replacement date 3 Vietnam Grand Prix Apr 3-5 Cancelled, seeking replacement date 4 Chinese Grand Prix Apr 17-19 Cancelled, seeking replacement date 5 Dutch Grand Prix May 1-3 Cancelled, seeking replacement date 6 Spanish Grand Prix May 8-10 Cancelled, seeking replacement date 7 Monaco Grand Prix May 21-24 Cancelled, will not be reschduled 8 Azerbaijan Grand Prix Jun 5-7 Cancelled, seeking replacement date 9 Canadian Grand Prix Jun 12-14 10 French Grand Prix Jun 26-28 11 Austrian Grand Prix Jul 3-5 12 British Grand Prix Jul 17-19 13 Hungarian Grand Prix Jul 31-Aug 2 14 Belgian Grand Prix Aug 28-30 15 Italian Grand Prix Sep 4-6 16 Singapore Grand Prix Sep 18-20 17 Russian Grand Prix Sep 25-27 18 Japanese Grand Prix Oct 9-11 19 United States Grand Prix Oct 23-25 20 Mexican Grand Prix Oct 30-Nov 1 21 Brazilian Grand Prix Nov 13-15 22 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Nov 27-29

Find out how Codemasters plan to enhance F1’s new Virtual Grand Prix series in RaceFans’ full-length interview with Paul Jeal later this week.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Gaming