Of a 17-race calendar, only Melbourne, Monaco and Montreal took the championship away from permanent circuits.
Wind on to 2023 and the balance has shifted to eight street venues versus 14.
And following the cancellation of the Chinese and Emilia Romagna Grands Prix, from the eight rounds run so far, only the Bahrain curtain-raiser and most recent hop to Barcelona have taken place at anything that might qualify as a ‘traditional’ circuit.
There is a little bit more nuance since the Jeddah Corniche lap is barely a street circuit with its snooker table-smooth surface. Albert Park is something of a hybrid and Miami's tour around the Hard Rock Stadium is borderline bespoke for F1.
Although championship owner Liberty Media is achieving its goal of turning more races into major city-based festivals, the on-track spectacle hasn't necessarily kept pace.
Amid fan complaints about how dull the early races of F1 in 2023 have been, street races have certainly copped their fair share of flak.
Some of that criticism seems justified. City circuits necessarily require compromise to shoehorn in a layout. A key braking zone or extended straight, factors that can encourage overtaking, have to make way for a run of 90-degree turns to navigate between buildings and a river.
The current crop of wide, ground-effect cars are not perfect fits for the crowned roads of Baku and manhole covers of Monaco.
F1's street track love affair has also forced Pirelli into a state of compromise. In a perfect world with unlimited budgets, a tyre supplier would develop one range of compounds for the demands of permanent tracks and then bring separate rubber tailor-made for street circuits.
But the Italian manufacturer is limited to five homologated compounds that it must deploy across the entire calendar.
“Usually, on a street circuit, you need softer compounds because the type of tarmac is smoother than on a circuit," Pirelli’s head of motorsport Mario Isola tells Autosport.
"But, because of the regulations, we have to homologate the range of tyres in advance, and so we have to work around the range of homologated compounds. We cannot make any special constructions for street circuits because this is also in the regulations.
“Then, not all the street circuits are the same. Monte Carlo is a very severe circuit. In Baku, you have a long straight where you stress the tyre because of the high speed. Miami is a street circuit but again with certain characteristics that are different from others in the past.”
As explored here, the Spanish Grand Prix produced some of the best racing in the midfield thanks to the wide variety of viable tyre strategies.
But that divergence from the pitwall to spice up the action has oft been absent on city streets. In Baku, for example, a safety car held the field on the same one-stopper and showed Pirelli's rubber to be especially durable on streets with slow-speed corners where lateral load is minimal.
Source: Autosport