We'd heard rumors, but it is now official, the 2012 Formula 1 season will not include the Turkish Grand Prix. The race has struggled to draw the kind of crowds needed for the Turkish organizers to justify the expense of the event ever since it was added to the schedule in 2005. With so many other locations vying their own F1 races, it's no surprise that F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone was unmotivated to go to great lengths to accommodate Turkey, and quite a few people saw this coming.

The now official 2012 schedule differs in several other ways from 2011. For starters, the US is once again on the list, a week before the season closer in Brazil. Bahrain is back on the schedule as well, although in this case, the race was never officially permanently dropped. The race was simply called off for the 2011 season due to unrest in Bahrain. Bahrain did lose its position as the season opener though, and the honor will once again go to Australia. There had been talk of moving the Indian Grand Prix to April, but we can now see that those plans were abandoned.

The official schedule will be as follows: March 18 - Australia March 25 - Malaysia April 15 - China April 22 - Bahrain May 13 - Spain May 27 - Monaco June 10 - Canada June 24 - Valencia, Europe July 8 - Great Britain July 22 - Germany July 29 - Hungary September 2 - Belgium September 9 - Italy September 23 - Singapore October 7 - Japan October 14 - Korea

October 28 - India November 4 - Abu Dhabi November 18 - United States November 25 - Brazil