2015 Formula One season

The 2015 Formula One season will be the 66th season of the Formula One World Championship, a motor racing championship for Formula One cars which is recognised by the sport's governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), as the highest class of competition for open-wheel racing cars. Twenty-two drivers representing eleven teams will contest twenty Grands Prix, starting in Australia on 15 March and ending in Abu Dhabi on 29 November as they compete for the World Drivers' and World Constructors' Championships. Lewis Hamilton is the defending Drivers' Champion after securing his second title at the 2014 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Mercedes will begin the season as the defending Constructors' Champion, having secured its first championship title at the 2014 Russian Grand Prix.

Signed teams and drivers
The following teams and drivers are currently signed to take part in the 2015 Formula One World Championship. Following crippling financial problems which forced Caterham and Marussia to miss the final races of the 2014 season, their entries in the 2015 season were cast into doubt; however, a provisional entry list that was released in November 2014 included the teams.

New entries process
In December 2013, the FIA announced its intentions to open the grid up to more entries, asking for expressions of interest from what it dubbed "competitive teams" willing to commit to the championship until the 2020 season. Three applications were received, including a bid from Gene Haas, co-owner of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team Stewart-Haas Racing; an entry submitted from Romania, and run in conjunction with former Jordan, Midland, Spyker, Force India and HRT manager Colin Kolles; and a third from Zoran Stefanović, a Serbian aerospace engineer who had previously attempted to join the grid for the 2010 and 2011 Formula One seasons under the name Stefan Grand Prix. Haas's entry, Haas F1, was the successful candidate, but the team later deferred their entry until the 2016 season.

Team changes



 * Honda will return to Formula One as an engine supplier, providing McLaren with a V6 engine and Energy Recovery System package, ending the team's twenty-year partnership with Mercedes-Benz. Honda had previously supplied McLaren from 1988 until 1992, when Honda ended their engine supply program. The company returned to the sport as an engine supplier in 2000, providing British American Racing and Jordan Grand Prix with engines until they purchased the former in 2006 and competed as a constructor until 2008.
 * Lotus will change engine suppliers, ending their association with Renault in favour of a deal with Mercedes.
 * Following the 2014 Russian Grand Prix, Marussia went into administration, missing the final three races of the season. The team appeared on the provisional entry list under the name "Manor F1", and in November 2014, administrators announced that the Marussia team would cease trading and close down, while Manor retained the entry.

Driver changes



 * Sebastian Vettel left Red Bull Racing at the end of the 2014 season after fifteen years with the team and its wider junior development programme to join Ferrari in the place of Fernando Alonso. Red Bull promoted Daniil Kvyat from Toro Rosso to fill the seat vacated by Vettel.
 * Fernando Alonso will return to McLaren, seven years after he last raced for the team. After weeks of speculation, Jenson Button was confirmed as the team's second driver, with Kevin Magnussen retained in a test and reserve role. The decision to appoint Button alongside Alonso gave McLaren the single most experienced driver line-up in Formula One history, with the drivers having over five hundred Grand Prix starts between them.
 * Toro Rosso's driver line-up was completely overhauled, with Kvyat promoted and Jean-Éric Vergne leaving the team to compete in the FIA Formula E Championship, then joining Ferrari as a test driver. In their place, the team chose reigning Formula Renault 3.5 Series champion Carlos Sainz, Jr., the son of two-time World Rally Champion Carlos Sainz; and 2014 FIA Formula Three runner-up Max Verstappen—the son of former driver Jos Verstappen—who can become the youngest driver to make his Formula One début at the age of 17 years, 164 days when he starts the 2015 season.
 * Marcus Ericsson left Caterham at the end of the 2014 season to join Sauber. He will be partnered by GP2 Series regular and former Williams test driver Felipe Nasr. As a result of the deals with Ericsson and Nasr, Esteban Gutiérrez and Adrian Sutil lost their seats. Gutiérrez later moved to Ferrari to become a test and reserve driver.

Season calendar
The following twenty Grands Prix are currently scheduled to take place in 2015.

Calendar changes

 * The German Grand Prix was set to return to the Nürburgring, in accordance with the event-sharing agreement established between the Nürburgring and the Hockenheimring in 2008. The Nürburgring had previously hosted the race in 2013 and so was scheduled to host it again in 2015, but the provisional calendar left the event-sharing agreement unresolved.
 * The Korean Grand Prix was scheduled to return to the Formula One calendar after being removed in 2014, at an unconfirmed venue. However, on 6 January 2015, the race was dropped from the 2015 calendar.
 * The Mexican Grand Prix is scheduled to return to the Formula One calendar for the first time since 1992. The race is to be held at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez circuit located in the centre of Mexico City, which also was the location of all of the Mexican Grands Prix in previous decades. The circuit will be substantially reconfigured to accommodate the sport's return.

Technical regulations

 * The number of power units that a driver may use in a season will be reduced from five in 2014 to four in 2015.
 * The rules regarding engine development that were introduced in 2014 will change, with the manufacturers allowed to perform half the development permitted in 2014; the development will be halved again in 2016.
 * Following the backlash over "ugly" nose designs in 2014, the FIA moved to amend the rules surrounding nose designs for the 2015 season. Noses will now be lower than in 2014, retaining a minimum cross section, but they must taper to a point at a fixed linear rate, effectively outlawing the dramatic finger shapes seen in 2014 in favour of a more gradual shape. Furthermore, the design of the nose must be symmetrical and consistent with the centreline of the car, thereby banning the more exotic designs, such as the "twin-tusk" approach used by Lotus on the E22 chassis.
 * The minimum weight of the cars at all times during an event was increased to 702 kg.
 * The ban on Front-and-Rear Interconnected suspension systems (FRIC) implemented in the middle of the 2014 season was formalised, with the regulations stating that the front and rear suspension must be designed in such a way that any change in performance must be a direct result of a change in load applied solely to them.
 * The anti-intrusion panels on both sides of the survival cell have been extended upwards to the rim of the cockpit and alongside the driver's head.
 * Following the financial struggles faced by Marussia and Caterham in, the FIA approved the use of 2014-specification chassis in 2015 provided that teams showed cause and received an individual dispensation to compete with their old chassis.

Sporting regulations

 * The partial ban on pit-to-car communication introduced at the 2014 Singapore Grand Prix will be extended to include a blanket ban on sharing technical data between team and driver, such as specific fuel consumption settings.
 * Double points will no longer be awarded at the final event of the championship.
 * Following the serious accident of Jules Bianchi during the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix a new procedure called virtual safety car (VSC) will be introduced, obliging drivers to reduce their speed to match the one indicated on their displays on their steering wheels. The procedure may be initiated when double waved yellow flags are needed on any section of a circuit where competitors and officials may be in danger, but the circumstances are not as such to warrant deployment of the actual safety car.
 * The safety car procedure was amended. Once the last lapped car will have passed the safety car, it will return to the pits at the end of the following lap. This is a change of the previous practice which required the unlapped cars to have caught up with the back of the pack before the safety car could return to the pits.
 * If a race is suspended, the cars will no longer line up on the grid but will slowly proceed to the pit lane instead. Pit exit will be closed and the first car to arrive in the pit lane will proceed to the exit with the other lining up behind the first one.
 * If any team personnel or team equipment remain on the grid after the fifteen-second signal has been shown before the start of the formation lap, the driver of the car concerned must start the race from the pit lane. If the driver concerned fails to obey this, they will receive a ten second stop-and-go penalty.
 * The replacement of a complete power unit will no longer result in a penalty. Instead, penalties will be applied cumulatively for individual components of the power unit. If such a grid place penalty is imposed and the driver's grid position is such that the full penalty cannot be applied, then the remainder of the penalty will no longer be carried over to the next race, but will instead be applied in the form of a time penalty during the race corresponding to the number of grid spaces remaining in the penalty.
 * In addition to the existing five-second penalty that may be served during a driver's scheduled pit stop, a new ten-second penalty that will have to be served in the same manner, will be introduced.
 * If a car is deemed to have been released from its pit stop in an unsafe manner, the driver will receive a ten second stop-and-go penalty. Further penalties will be applied if the stewards believe that the driver is aware of this and attempts to drive the car regardless.
 * The qualifying procedure has been further clarified to cater to different sizes of starting grids: if twenty-four cars are entered for the race, seven will be eliminated after the each of the first two qualifying segments; if twenty-two are entered, six will be eliminated after each qualifying segment and so on if fewer cars are eligible.