Revealed: Middle East F1 races won’t be replaced if they are cancelled

Formula 1's Bahrain and Saudi Arabian GPs are unlikely to be replaced if cancelled due to the Iran war, despite speculation about potential alternate events.

Upcoming motorsport in the Middle East has been thrown into doubt in the wake of the joint US-Israel war with Iran that began last week. 

With travel chaos in the region due to air strikes, the FIA World Endurance Championship announced this week that its Qatar season-opener has been postponed. 

MotoGP has also admitted its Qatar Grand Prix, set for the 10-12 April weekend of the Bahrain F1 round, is unlikely to take place.

The consensus in the Australian Grand Prix paddock is that it’s not a question of if the two upcoming Middle East races will be cancelled, but when, given the daily reports of ongoing attacks in the region.

Thus far, the position of the F1 organisation and the FIA is that they are monitoring the situation, but there are no signs that the conflict that is impacting the whole of the Gulf region will de-escalate anytime soon.

Safety of personnel is obviously the priority, and nobody wants to see a repeat of the efforts required to get the Pirelli, Mercedes and McLaren team members out of Bahrain last week after the aborted tyre test at the outset of this conflict.

There is no specific deadline looming for a decision, so F1 is basically waiting to see if the situation will improve, although that looks highly unlikely at the moment. 

However, Crash.net sources suggest that a call will have to be made in around 10 days, in other words during the Chinese GP weekend, in order to give teams a chance to reorganise.

A decision will definitely have to be taken in advance of the Japanese GP. 

The freight is currently scheduled to travel from Suzuka to Bahrain in the days after the race – some teams are staying for a Pirelli test – and if that’s not happening, some notice will be required to plan an alternative strategy.

An extra headache that will have to be addressed sooner rather than later is that the Formula 2 freight is due to leave Australia for Bahrain on Monday, as it is not going to China.

F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali told Sky Sports in Australia: "First of all is safety for all the relevant stakeholders involved. We don’t want to do any statements today because things are evolving. [The decision on] this issue will be taken together. We have an open option in place of course; it's all connected to the risks that are evolving that we need to manage. All options could be open at the right moment. We will make the decision of course involving everyone."

Organising new races in such short-notice almost impossible

The complication in these situations is always that there are huge commercial repercussions related to the sanctioning fee, and who pays. In essence it’s up to the promoter to cancel an event, and that’s why decisions are sometimes made late: Imola 2023, which was canned due to flash flooding, being an example of that.

In both current cases, the promoter is in effect the national government. Both have a very good relationship with F1, and money is not the issue for them. Any decision to cancel is likely to be reached on a very amicable basis.

There has been lots of speculation about alternative events being added to the calendar to fill the gap, with the likes of Imola, Portimao and Turkey being mentioned, but it makes no sense to throw on a race at short notice.

While the series showed during COVID that it could react quickly and put on events at short notice, then it had motivation to do so.

The calendar had to reach a bare minimum total of races to ensure that TV and sponsorship contracts were fulfilled, which is why we had two events apiece at Silverstone, Austria and Bahrain, and other circuits were added at short notice.

Some events were subsidised by the F1 organisation.

This time F1 can afford to drop from 24 to 22 and all contracts would still be valid, and the only loss would be the sanctioning fees – and there’s still a chance that Bahrain and Saudi Arabia will pay some if not all of their fees even if there isn’t a race. 

Thus there is no desperate urge to keep the race total up just for the sake of it.

There’s also the obvious problem of logistics, especially if any new event dropped into the vacated Bahrain and Jeddah slots in April.

However, it is impossible for anyone to put an F1 race on at such short notice, and circuits are simply not ready. 

Don’t forget that most of the COVID era events were run without spectators, which reduced logistical issues for the venues, and also selling tickets was not an issue.

Any new race would also have to make financial sense, and promoters won’t be willing to front up sufficient funds with no time to sell enough tickets.

There’s also a huge cost involved in bringing the whole F1 circus back from Japan to Europe and then sending it back out to Miami, at a time when a huge effort has been made to ensure the calendar follows a logical path around the globe.

One possible option would be to repeat the 2020 formula and have a venue run a double-header on consecutive weekends. 

In theory, Suzuka could hold a second event a week after the Japanese GP given that everyone is there and everything will be in place, but there is no commercial appetite from owners Honda to do that. 

It’s the same scenario for a second Miami race in May. Also while the venue will be ready and the teams in place there’s no guarantee that marshals and so on will be free for a second weekend.

F1 faces further logistical headaches because of Iran conflict 

At the other end of the year there is a space between Baku and Singapore that could perhaps be filled by a race outside Europe – even a postponed Bahrain or Jeddah – but that would create an unwanted triple header in an already crowded schedule.

Assuming there is a huge gap in the calendar in the month that follows Suzuka, the likelihood is that the freight will go straight to Miami. 

However, it’s possible that teams make take advantage of the unscheduled opportunity to get their cars back to base for some TLC.

There is even the potential for a test session to be added somewhere in Europe, something that teams may be keen on given their desire to run the new cars as much as possible.

One headache that all the teams have relates to their sea freight, which is mainly garage and hospitality equipment. 

Teams typically have five or six sets which travel by ship and leapfrog each other to the various flyaway events.

All teams left one complete set in situ in Bahrain after the tests – the garages are still fully equipped in anticipation of the race – while everyone already has second sets in boxes in Jeddah waiting to be set up.

Both sets will have been earmarked to travel on to other races later in the year, but for the moment they are stranded.