Fresh Middle East Attacks Cast Doubt Over F1's Qatar and Abu Dhabi Finale
Renewed violence in the region has revived doubts over Formula 1's final two rounds, and losing them would put Andrea Kimi Antonelli's 102-point championship lead all but beyond his rivals' reach.
Fresh attacks in the Middle East have raised new questions over whether Formula 1 can stage the Qatar and Abu Dhabi Grands Prix, the last two rounds of the 2026 season, according to GPfans. Both races sit at the end of a calendar with six rounds still to run, and both are now subject to a judgement that has nothing to do with lap times. For the championship leader, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, the outcome could decide whether his title is won on track or settled by the calendar.
The arithmetic of a four-race run-in
Start with the numbers, because they frame everything else. Antonelli leaves Singapore on 340 points with eight wins. His Mercedes team-mate George Russell is second on 238, 102 behind. Lewis Hamilton is a further nine points back on 229, with Max Verstappen on 221 and Charles Leclerc on 215.
With six rounds remaining, the maximum haul from Grand Prix finishes is 150 points. That keeps Russell, Hamilton, Verstappen, Leclerc and Lando Norris, 139 behind, mathematically alive, even if only Russell has a realistic claim to be called a contender.
Take Qatar and Abu Dhabi away and the picture changes completely. Four Grands Prix are worth at most 100 points to any driver, and Antonelli leads by 102. Even if he failed to score again and Russell won every remaining race, the Mercedes pair would finish on 340 and 338 respectively. Cancelling the Gulf double-header would, in effect, hand Antonelli the championship before the cars have even reached Austin.
Even with the full calendar intact, he is close. If Antonelli wins the United States Grand Prix on 25 October while Russell finishes outside the top nine and Hamilton outside the top four, his lead will exceed the 125 points still available and the title will be his. That is a demanding combination of results, but it shows how little room his rivals have left.
The constructors’ fight looks different. Mercedes lead Ferrari by 134 points, and a team can score up to 43 points in a weekend with a one-two. Four rounds would leave 172 points on the table, so Ferrari would still have a mathematical path. Further down the order, the stakes are financial rather than sporting. McLaren hold third on 339, only seven points clear of Red Bull on 332, and every position in that table carries prize money. Losing two rounds would freeze those battles early, taking away chances for teams to recover ground at circuits where they might expect to be strong.
Singapore tightened Antonelli’s grip
The timing matters because Antonelli’s lead has just grown. In Singapore, Verstappen converted pole into his second win of the season, with Leclerc second and Antonelli third from fourth on the grid. Russell, starting 19th, recovered to ninth for two points.
That was a strong drive given where he started, but the net effect was a 13-point swing towards his team-mate. Antonelli went into the weekend 89 points clear and left it 102 ahead. On a circuit where overtaking is notoriously difficult, a poor qualifying session was always going to be costly, and Russell paid the price.
Hamilton’s afternoon was a missed opportunity of a different kind. He started third and finished sixth, scoring eight points to Leclerc’s 18. Ferrari’s drivers are separated by 14 points in the standings, and neither has more than one win. If the calendar contracts, neither can count on a Gulf finale to rescue their year.
Antonelli has not relied on others’ misfortune. Eight wins from 17 rounds is a dominant return, and Mercedes’ 11 victories as a team, against two apiece for Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull, show how strongly the 2026 regulations have favoured them. Any suggestion that a shortened season would cheapen his title should be weighed against that record.
Bahrain, Jeddah and the precedents F1 can draw on
Formula 1 has had to weigh regional instability against commercial commitments several times, and the precedents point in different directions.
In 2011, the Bahrain Grand Prix was postponed and ultimately cancelled amid civil unrest in the kingdom. The sport took weeks to reach that conclusion, and the delay drew heavy criticism for leaving teams, staff and the event organisers in limbo.
In 2022, a missile strike hit an oil facility a few miles from the Jeddah circuit during practice for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Drivers met late into the night to discuss whether to race. The event went ahead after assurances from organisers and authorities, but several drivers made clear afterwards that they had been uncomfortable with the process as well as the outcome.
The 2020 season showed how far the calendar can bend when it must, with races moved, added and run behind closed doors to salvage a championship during the pandemic. The 2023 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, called off days before the event because of severe flooding, showed that a late cancellation is possible, if disruptive.
In each case, the decisive factor was the safety of the people travelling, not the championship table. That is the right order of priorities, and it should be again.
Abu Dhabi has closed every season since 2014, including the bitterly contested 2021 finale. Qatar joined the calendar in 2021 and has been a fixture since its return in 2023. Both events are among the sport’s most valuable commercially, and both are woven into end-of-season logistics. Losing them would be a significant blow to the hosts and to Formula One Management’s revenues. With late November and early December the only window before the winter break, there is no realistic way of replacing them with other venues at this stage of the year.
The case for an early call on the Gulf rounds
The next two weeks give F1 a natural window. The circus heads to Austin for the United States Grand Prix, and the Gulf rounds sit four races further down the line. Freight schedules, travel bookings and accommodation for thousands of personnel are committed well in advance, which is one reason the sport has historically been reluctant to cancel before it is forced to.
That reluctance is understandable, but it carries a cost. The lesson of Bahrain in 2011 is that prolonged uncertainty damages everyone: teams who cannot plan, staff and families who do not know whether they will be travelling, and the credibility of the governing bodies themselves. Jeddah in 2022 showed the opposite risk, of a decision being made under pressure in the middle of a race weekend. Neither is a model to repeat.
The championship should play no part in the decision, and there is no reason to think it will. Still, it is impossible to ignore how a cancellation would land. Russell, Hamilton and the others would lose two races in which to chase Antonelli, and the title would be confirmed by arithmetic rather than by a chequered flag. Antonelli, for his part, would be denied the chance to seal it with a result of his own. For a driver who has won eight Grands Prix this year, that would be an unsatisfying way to become champion, though a perfectly legitimate one.
If both Gulf rounds are lost, the 2026 title belongs to Antonelli in all but name the moment the decision is announced. If they survive, the most likely outcome is that he settles it himself somewhere in the Americas before either race takes place. For his rivals, the uncomfortable truth is that the calendar may change only the timing of this championship, not its destination. For Formula 1, the test is whether it can make a clear call on safety grounds before Austin, rather than repeat the drift of Bahrain in 2011.