Feb 28, 2026, 10:09 AM ET<\/p>\n
Formula 1 has said it is “closely monitoring” the situation in the Middle East ahead of upcoming races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Missile strikes continue to rock the region after United States and Israeli forces attacked Iran with several countries closing their airspace.<\/p>\n
A number of people in F1’s vast travelling circus were scheduled to head to Australia for next weekend’s opening race via the Middle East, with some now having to reroute their flights.<\/p>\n
It is understood F1 chiefs are confident the season opener in Melbourne a week from Sunday will be unaffected.<\/p>\n
However, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are due to host the fourth and fifth rounds of the new campaign on April 12 and April 19 respectively.<\/p>\n
F1 is due to head for races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia in April.\u00a0Mark Thompson\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
And an F1 spokesperson said: “Our next three races are in Australia, China and Japan and not in the Middle East — those races are not for a number of weeks.<\/p>\n
“As always, we closely monitor any situation like this and work closely with relevant authorities.”<\/p>\n
Tire supplier Pirelli, meanwhile, has cancelled its scheduled tire test in Bahrain.<\/p>\n
Last summer, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali admitted the sport had a contingency plan in place for the final two rounds of the season — in Qatar on Nov. 30 and in Abu Dhabi a week later — amid political tensions in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Both races went ahead as planned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feb 28, 2026, 10:09 AM ET Formula 1 has said it is “closely monitoring” the situation in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-505573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}