The inevitable has now been confirmed: The two Formula 1 races scheduled for next month in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have been canceled.
After what felt like a considerably longer time than necessary to deliberate, the FIA confirmed its decision via social media on Saturday afternoon.
Perhaps more surprisingly, neither F1 nor the FIA named any potential replacements for those two GPs. This will effectively give the entire field a month-long break between the Japanese Grand Prix at the end of March and the Miami race on May 1. It had previously been discussed holding a solo race at Imola, but event organizers felt there was not enough time to sell tickets, and therefore, they would not be profitable even if Liberty Media offered them a discounted hosting fee.
Given the comments on the FIA’s Instagram post, it’s clear that fans are upset about the removal of two entire races from the World Championship. I’d agree that it sucks, but I’d also side with F1 and the FIA on the fact that propping up an entire F1 race anywhere in the world on just a few weeks’ notice is nearly impossible. Sure, it was done during COVID, but those events were closed to the public, so the level of organization and the complexity of logistics were just a fraction of what they would have to be now.
Perhaps the silver lining here is that all teams will have a full month between races and will have been given an enormous, uninterrupted break to develop their 2026 packages after a tumultuous start. Surely Mercedes’ Toto Wolff won’t be too happy about that. But hey, that’s racing for ya.
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