Interlagos first hosted a championship grand prix in 1973 but became a consistent feature of the Formula 1 calendar from 1990 after a stint of F1 racing at the punishing Jacarepagua circuit in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro while Interlagos was refurbished.

The result of said refurbishment was a lap half the length of the original with a smoother track surface, but even with more recent updates in 2007 and again prior to this year’s race, the clay soil it’s built on means it will likely remain a bumpy challenge in these ground effect cars.

The lap itself is one of two extremes – maximising speed down the long straights in the first and third sectors pushes the teams towards a low-drag setup, whereas the twistier middle sector rewards high downforce. Finding the ideal setup is therefore a balancing act, however teams tend to lean to the higher downforce end given that there’s a DRS zone down the second straight that mitigates some of the penalty of that on straight-line speed.

With flowing corners requiring combined entries of cornering and braking, good stability is vital, as is the front-end through those lower-speed sequences in the middle sector.

Characteristic Considerations

Iconic sequences

The lap around Interlagos opens with a downhill run though perhaps its most iconic corner sequence – the ‘Senna S’ or ‘S do Senna’ – turns one and two, one of the most popular overtaking zones over the track. The drivers will be looking to push the braking as late as possible on entry to carry speed into the apex and then around into turn two, but the corner being banked on the inside can cause the front left to unload, making lockups common.

The middle sector is where the corners really come thick and fast. Eight of the circuit’s fifteen corners are here – four left-handers and four right – three of which come in succession as the tight turns 6-8. It’s a phase of the lap where finding a rhythm is critical as just one lockup in the sequence could throw off the rest of the corners to come.

Despite there being four corners left of the lap as the drivers enter sector 3, turn 12 is the important one as it set ups up the speed the driver can carry onto the monster uphill straight all the way around to completing the lap.

Elevation changes

Interlagos itself is not only the second highest altitude track F1 visits, although it is significantly lower than the highest of Mexico City (2,285m vs. 765m), but there are also a number of elevation changes around the circuit itself.

The start finish straight is the peak so the grid positions sit on the uphill run to the line which requires the drivers to find a balance between holding the car on the brakes gently, but also not rolling backwards before they take a race start here.

The most significant elevation change comes after they cross the line and dip down through turns one, two and three before the left-hander of four – a change of 40 metres in fact. Of course, that elevation then has to be recovered to bring them back to the line at the end of the lap which takes the form of the long, uphill run out of turn 12. Power and traction are key there, as even in the wet, it’s a blast of full throttle all the way to the line.

Chaotic weather

Speaking of the rain and it is a major talking point of any race weekend at Interlagos, and for good reason. It’s produced some of the wildest races there in the past, like 2003, 2016 or even as recently as last year, and predicting when or where it might hit is far from easy even with the complex forecasts and radars the teams have access to.

The altitude, humidity, temperature and time of year when F1 visits Sao Paulo all combine to make rain cells seemingly appear from nowhere with unexpected intensity and duration, and often they’ll hit one part of the track and not others.

Managing that becomes about reading the data in real time and taking on driver feedback to inform strategy and when to make the all important crossover. As we saw last year, it can be a delicate balance between boxing or waiting for an intervention from race control.

Standing water and streams can also be a problem here given the downhill run through the first sector and the kerbing in sector two that can collect it too. Ahead of this year’s race, extra drainage grooves have been added to mitigate that through turn 2, from the pit exit to turn 4, after turn 5, from turns 11-12 and along the start-finish.

It’s that standing water that means the extreme wet tyre can make a rare appearance in a grand prix here, even outside of safety car conditions, but the green-walled intermediate is the wet weather racing favourite.

Long pit-lane

The pit-lane at Interlagos is one of the longest of the season and as one of the shortest circuits, that comes at a cost on race day. Last year, the average loss from entry to exit for a standard stop was 26.6s and given that the quickest average race lap-time was 84.018s (Verstappen), it’s one that has to be managed carefully.

The Compounds

Pirelli are bringing a range to Interlagos that hasn’t been seen there since 2023. It’s a step harder than last year’s trio and sees the C2 as the hard, C3 as the medium and C4 as the soft.

The dry weather tyres weren’t used during the grand prix last year, owing to the rain, but their appearances over Friday’s free practice and Sprint qualifying and Saturday morning’s 100km Sprint saw them show high levels of wear and graining, particularly on the rear axle.

The whole circuit had been resurfaced prior to last year’s race weekend and so Pirelli anticipate that the combination of ageing of the majority of the surface by now and the harder compound could see longer performance lives for the tyres.

As a result, the soft tyre could come into play during the grand prix but also the Sprint – which will be a valuable learning opportunity for the teams in regards to its higher fuel performance.

We’ve seen it work here before as part of a two-stop with the medium in 2023 and 2022 – both grands prix that followed soft Sprint runs. If it’s dry, this year could follow a very similar pattern.

The Weather

The only thing that could throw a spanner in the works for that plan is the weather. While Friday’s practice running is likely to be dry, there’s a gradually increasing chance of rain showers as the day goes on. But Saturday is the day most likely to have its running impaced by the weather.

There’s an 80% chance of rain over the Sprint and grand prix qualifying with strong wind and gusts of up to 75kph possible. Even so, the air temperature remains high with a minimum of 21°C and maximum of 27°C predicted.

Sunday will be cooler than both previous days of the weekend, but the race could be dry which will make setup and strategy more of a headache for the teams if their learnings to that point have been come from wet sessions.

The Sao Paulo Grand Prix begins with Free Practice 1 at 11:30am local time on Friday November 7th. The rest of the timings for the weekend are as follows (all in local time):

• FP1: Friday 7th November, 11:30-12:30
• Sprint Qualifying: Friday 7th November, 15:30-16:14
• Sprint: Saturday 8th November, 11:00-12:00
• Qualifying: Saturday 8th November, 15:00-16:00
• Sao Paulo Grand Prix: Sunday 9th November, 14:00