F1 set to cancel Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix due to war in Middle East as 2026 calendar to drop to 22 races
https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/33694/13519254/f1-set-to-cancel-bahrain-and-saudi-arabian-grands-prix-due-to-war-in-middle-east-as-2026-calendar-to-drop-to-22-racesOpen linkView original on lemmy.dbzer0.com
Should have listened to Brad Pitt and built the cars for combat...
Isn't Miami also involved in an international war?
It is, but they dont consider it a threat of being bombed.
However, I personally am.not sure it is safe from terrorist attacks. F1 might be logistically difficult for that though. Its not in a building, things are spread apart, and so on. But it would still have major news coverage.
This means no GP for the entire month of April
Make it a PERMANENT cancelation and ill be sooooo happy!!!
I miss having the “Dakar” in regular countries instead of one rich kingdom. Sportswashing makes it all so fucking boring.
Ironically, with the fuel shortage, F1's pivot to synthetic fuel is a far smaller increase in cost than they forecasted.
To be fair, the fuel used by the cars is only a small fraction of the overall fuel and energy usage of F1. The far bigger share is logistics
and that is just the first to be cancelled...
The USA just provided motivation for a couple of generations of terrorism; and that is not even counting on their own domestic issues. Who the hell would want to (or be able to afford) traveling anywhere for an entertainment event that could be an easy target for a terrorist attack or ICE presence?
And most of Europe including the “home of motorsport” UK completely allowed the attacks on Iran and even allowed use of their bases. Many agree with it.
I’m 100% for cancelling US races for these reasons btw.
Would be a nice opportunity to go to Sepang or Thailand finally but I appreciate it's not very realistical. Baku, Qatar, Abu Dhabi presumably also at risk at the other end of the calendar.
We should take this opportunity to make further changes to F1 in order to future proof the competiton and ensure strong ongoing fan interest:
Also, the “F" in F1 stands for "final" now... Final 1...
This sounds like Clarksons plans for F1
I'm a bit disappointed they didn't pull in some of the other tracks that aren't currently in the rotation to replace them.
Why cancel the Saudi GP though? Saudi wasn't attacked and even if it was Jeddah is on the opposite side of the country. When the initial strikes happened all the diverted flights were going into Jeddah because it was a safe option.
Iran did attack Riyadh. There’s no way F1 is taking thousands of people into a war zone. Jeddah is well within range.
I fear they would if they were given enough money.
The Houthis could join the war any day, and they already tried to strike during an F1 weekend to humiliate Aramco already in the past
Yikes. My guy is clueless.