The longest, shortest and fastest F1 track

The longest and shortest tracks of 2026

The longest is Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, at 7.004 km. The shortest is Monaco, at 3.337 km: a lap of Spa is 2.1 times as long. It has been this way for years. Spa has been the longest track of every season since 1985, except 2003 and 2006, when there was no Belgian Grand Prix. Monaco has been the shortest since 1984, except in 2020, when there was no race in Monaco.

All 23 tracks on the 2026 calendar, from longest to shortest:

Lengths and corner counts are from f1db, as on the circuit pages; for Madring, Formula 1 gives 5.414 km on its event page. The 2026 Bahrain Grand Prix is held at Sepang in Malaysia, and that is how the Formula 1 calendar lists it too: the “Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia”.

How long is a lap?

The average lap of the 2026 tracks is 5.17 km, and 12 of the 23 are longer than 5.4 km. Nineteen tracks fall between 4.26 and 5.89 km. Only Spa, Las Vegas and Baku are longer, and only Monaco is shorter.

The longer the lap, the fewer laps in the race: the distance must exceed 305 km, or 260 km in Monaco. That is why the race at Spa is 44 laps long and the one in Monaco 78. How the number of laps is worked out is explained in the race duration article.

The fastest track is Monza

The fastest track per lap is Monza. Here is how we measure it: divide the lap length by the time of the fastest lap in the race to get that lap’s average speed. Of the 15 races of 2026 run by 29 September, Monza’s figure is the highest — 249.7 km/h (155 mph), 18 km/h more than the next track, Spa.

Monza is fast because the cars spend most of the lap at full throttle: 80% of it, according to Formula 1. The start/finish straight there is 1.1 km long.

2025 told the same story. At Monza, Lando Norris set the fastest lap of the race in 1:20.901 — an average of 257.8 km/h. Next came Jeddah at 242.2 km/h, Spa at 240.5 and Las Vegas at 239.1. By this measure, no championship race since 1950 has been faster, and the top 17 places all belong to races at Monza.

The fastest lap depends on the weather, the tyres and how the race unfolds, so compare figures from different seasons with care. Why the fastest tracks were slower in 2026 than in 2025 is explained in the top speed article. It also covers average race speeds: the fastest race in history was run at Monza too.

The slowest track is Monaco

The slowest is Monaco. By the same measure, the fastest lap of its 2026 race averaged 163.5 km/h. That is almost 29 km/h slower than at the next of the 15 tracks raced so far, the Hungaroring, where it was 192.3 km/h. In 2025 Monaco came out at 164.1 km/h, also the slowest lap of the season.

The track is narrow, and according to Formula 1 overtaking there is harder. How street circuits like Monaco differ from permanent tracks is explained in the street circuits article.

The longest tracks in history

The longest track in World Championship history was Pescara in Italy, at 25.579 km. It hosted a single Grand Prix, on 18 August 1957: 18 laps, 460 km. Stirling Moss won in a Vanwall and also set the fastest lap — 9:44.6.

The years are the first and last championship Grands Prix on that layout, not every year in between: Monza with the banking, for example, hosted races only in 1955, 1956, 1960 and 1961. Lengths are from f1db.

The shortest tracks in history

The shortest lap in championship history is Monaco’s from 1955 to 1972, at 3.145 km. The six shortest layouts:

In 2026 the Monaco lap is longer, at 3.337 km, but there is still no shorter track on the calendar.

How tracks got shorter

The long tracks of the 1950s to 1970s did not stay on the calendar in their old form:

• Spa — 14.1 km until 1970, between 6.94 and 7.001 km in 1983–2005, and 7.004 km since 2007: half the length of the old lap;
• Nürburgring — the Nordschleife until 1976, a new track of 4.542–4.556 km in 1984–2001, and 5.148 km in 2002–2020;
• Hockenheim — between 6.79 and 6.823 km in 1970–2001, and 4.574 km since 2002;
• Monza — 10 km with the banking in 1955–1961, and 5.793 km since 2000.