F1 races cancelled, F2 rescheduled
The Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix were cancelled because of the war in Iran, creating an unusual five‑week gap in the F1 calendar and prompting Formula 2 to reschedule the affected races to Miami and Montreal — F2’s first-ever events in North America. (That calendar shake-up is already forcing teams and series planners to rethink logistics and rhythm.) ( )
Formula 1 lost two April races in one shot when Bahrain and Saudi Arabia were scrubbed after the war in Iran upended the Middle East leg of the calendar, leaving the series with no replacement events and a five-week gap after Japan. That gap runs from the Japanese Grand Prix on March 29 to the Miami Grand Prix on May 3, which is an odd rhythm for a sport that usually moves like a traveling circus from one weekend to the next. Bahrain and Jeddah were not random stops on the map. Formula 1 had originally put them in April because Ramadan falls across February and March in 2026, so the schedule had already been built around the region before the conflict blew a hole in it. The cancellation did not just hit Formula 1. Formula 2, Formula 3, and F1 Academy were also due to race on those weekends, so the feeder series suddenly lost two early rounds that teams had already planned freight, staff travel, and spare parts around. Formula 2 found a workaround first. On April 9, the series confirmed that the Bahrain and Saudi rounds would be moved onto the Formula 1 weekends in Miami and Montreal, turning May and June into Formula 2’s first-ever race meetings in North America. That sounds tidy on paper, but Formula 2 is a tightly packed one-make series with 11 teams and 22 drivers, and its 2026 calendar was originally built around Melbourne, Bahrain, and Jeddah before Europe. Now the championship jumps from Australia to the United States and Canada instead. Miami becomes Round 2 and Montreal becomes Round 3, which means the first three Formula 2 weekends of 2026 are now separated by long-haul flights across three continents rather than the usual regional sequence. Formula 1, by contrast, is simply waiting. The championship still has a 24-race framework on its published 2026 calendar, but April now contains empty space where Sakhir and Jeddah were supposed to sit, and Miami is the next race on the board.
