February, not traditionally a hotbed of motorsport action. Sleet, wind, rain and cold don’t necessarily add up to good motorsport conditions. However there is a lot more to the world than West Sussex, which means that in about 75 per cent of the globe the weather is better than our good old British rain. So, with that in mind, here is a helpful calendar of motorsport action in this most frigid of months.
What motorsport is on in February?
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In a shocking calendar revelation this is mostly non-European events, but there is a very good mix of types of motorsport going on in February. It’s dominated by NASCAR, which of course gets going at Daytona in February every year, the second major event at the World Centre of Racing of the year, the first being the Daytona 24. As normal the Daytona 500 isn’t just a standard NASCAR event, and is more of a long festival, with the qualifying Clash races in the week before the actual 500 on Valentine’s Day (14th February). There’s no break for the NASCAR circus after the 500, with the massive weekly slog of races beginning immediately – the Cup Series will race on the Daytona road course on 21st February, before travelling down to Miami for a race at Homestead on 28th February.
Outside of the US, Saudi Arabia will see the start of the much-delayed 2020-2021 Formula E season with the Diryah e-Prix. The Saudi event wasn’t meant to be the first round of this season, and it was meant of course to kick off in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic continues to shuffle seasons. To make up for the troubled calendar there will be two races in Diryah, although thankfully it isn’t going to be six consecutive races at the same venue, like at the end of the 2019/20 season.
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In more unusual scheduling news, the Australian Supercars Championship (which you probably more normally know as Aussie V8s or V8 Supercars) will kick off its season on 28th Feb... at Bathurst. No, this isn’t the iconic 1,000-mile race, instead there’s an extra round on the Mountain, a 500-mile race that takes the place of the cancelled Bathurst 12 Hour GT3 race – an event owned by the Supercars ownership company.
Off track the WRC continues on 26th February, with the first appearance for the Arctic Rally on the world championship. The rally in the very north of Finland (inside the arctic circle in case you didn’t guess) will take the place vacated by Rally Sweden due to... you guessed it, the COVID-19 pandemic.
Outside of those three championships there’s not a huge amount going on, unless the Australian TCR Championship or S5000 series, which share a weekend at Phillip Island float your boat.
February 2021 motorsport calendar
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1st
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2nd |
3rd |
4th |
5th |
6th |
7th |
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8th
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9th |
10th NASCAR – Daytona Clash |
11th |
12th |
13th |
14th NASCAR Daytona 500 |
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15th
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16th |
17th |
18th |
19th |
20th |
21st |
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22nd
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23rd |
24th |
25th |
26th Formula E Diryah e-Prix I WRC Arctic Rally
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27th Formula E Diryah e-Prix II |
28th NASCAR Homestead |
Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.
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