The Formula 1 season will now only have 20 races as the Korean Grand Prix have been dropped from its calendar. Although it surprised everyone when it was added to the schedule last month, this Tuesday, the FIA have informed that it has been removed from the final calendar.

A spokesman from the race said that Korea was only added because of the requests of Bernie Ecclestone a commercial rights holder but then was removed when they were no more viable. The revised schedule has come up on the official website of FIA and the decision was not at all a surprise.

The F1 race to be held on 3rd May is the fifth race of the season and is being held only a week before the European race in Spain. The inclusion was solely depending on the fact that the engine manufacturers could still make 5 engines this season contrary to the rules of 2015 where they could only make 4. The first plan was made on the basis that every driver could run 5 engines if there were more than just 20 races.

As per the sources from the top level, the move was made only after the pressure from Renault and Red Bull the works team. Renault is the one that had reliability problems last year and this year it is under a huge pressure to improve its engines so that it can catch up with Mercedes.

Some of the rival teams have pointed out that the calendar that was published in December wasn’t the original one as it showed Korea as unconfirmed whereas the calendar without Korea had already been published back in September. After the loopholes in the rules were pointed out by Ferrari, the pressure of allowing the drivers five engines during the season was also hugely reduced as they then decided to allow only limited number of engines.