(Motorsport-Total.com) – Formula 1 will not hold a rescheduled race in the Middle East in 2026, that is now certain. Due to the renewed conflict between Iran and the USA, the premier class currently sees no possibility to hold a race in Bahrain.
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Formula 1 was already prepared to travel to Bahrain once more between the races in Baku and Singapore to make up for the Grand Prix that was canceled in April. However, a decision had to be made now for logistical reasons – and it left no other option than a cancellation.
Pirelli’s new motorsport chief Dario Marrafuschi explains why an additional race in the Middle East would have been a logistical challenge for the tire manufacturer: “We are talking about a lead time of about four months here,” says the Italian. “It takes around 15 weeks to organize transport of this scale.”
But that time is not available, as it would have been less than three months until the planned Grand Prix, especially since the uncertainty about the situation and possible travel routes makes planning even more difficult, as he explains in an exclusive interview with Motorsport.com Italy, a sister platform of Motorsport-Total.com in the Motorsport Network.
“Unfortunately, it is still impossible to predict how stable the situation will be in the Strait of Hormuz area in the Middle East,” says Marrafuschi. “We are dealing with two logistical bottlenecks: the Strait of Hormuz itself and the area controlled by the Houthis in front of Yemen, which complicates the transit of cargo ships.”
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Pirelli has considered various scenarios. To reach the Middle East, under current conditions, one would have to circumvent the entire African continent.
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The normal route through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea is currently not an option, as Houthi rebels at the bottleneck Bab al-Mandab in front of Yemen are launching attacks on cargo ships, which poses too high a risk.
In both routes, one would still have to pass through the Strait of Hormuz between the United Arab Emirates and Iran to reach the Persian Gulf and finally Bahrain.
A purely theoretical alternative to bypass both maritime danger zones: “We could go through the Suez Canal and then cross Saudi Arabia from Jeddah towards the rest of the Middle East [by land], provided this route is passable and efficient,” says Marrafuschi. But since the security situation in Saudi Arabia is also tense, this is purely theoretical.
In the end, it was decided that a race in Bahrain in autumn would be too big a risk – both in terms of safety and logistics. “At the moment, uncertainty is unfortunately the dominant factor,” says the Pirelli chief.
“I could not say how long it would take to reach a potential race in the Middle East – also because even if we could circumvent Africa, we would still need to know if the Strait of Hormuz is open.”
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