As China returns to the calendar after years of COVID-related delays, F1 finally has achieved its record-breaking 24-race schedule, the maximum currently allowed under F1 and the FIA's commercial agreements.
The 2024 schedule contains the same 24 events as the original 2023 plans but has seen several tweaks to make the calendar more sustainable by grouping regional races.
"We're working on regionalising the calendar," said former F1 sporting director Steve Nielsen, who has since moved to the FIA, in December last year. "We have a future calendar, I won't tell you from which year, but we have a future sort of perfect calendar, within some years down the line.
"And we're iterating gradually towards that each year, moving an event here or there by a week. So, there's a strategy to get from where we are now, which we're not happy with, to a much happier place in a few years' time. But it's a gradual process."
While clearly efforts have been made to make the calendar more logical, after one look at the 2024 schedule it is equally obvious that - as Nielsen suggested - F1's objective of coming up with a "perfect calendar" is very much a work in progress.
In an ideal world, races are twinned back-to-back based on geographical vicinity, or at least a logical air connection.
It means team personnel and other paddock members only need to undertake one long-haul trip for every two flyaway races, being able to stay out in Asia or the Americas instead of having to fly back and forth after every weekend.
On the other end of the spectrum is the dreaded triple-header, of which the 2023 calendar has two, including a gruelling three-week slog to Austin, Mexico and Sao Paulo, which means teams go three weekends without seeing the factory, or more importantly, their loved ones.
Source: Autosport