The category exceptionally expanded the Baku round before the scheduled rounds for Qatar and Abu Dhabi; officially, the calendar remains unchanged, but the move occurs amid uncertainties caused by conflicts in the Middle East.
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Formula 2 announced an unusual change this week. The Baku round, scheduled for September 24 to 26, will have an expanded format, with two qualifying sessions and two Feature Races, in addition to the Sprint. Officially, the justification is to take advantage of an available window in the Azerbaijan GP schedule and offer more action to the public.
It may be just that. But the timing chosen for the change allows another interpretation.
After Baku, Formula 2 will have only two more rounds in 2026: Qatar, between November 27 and 29, and Abu Dhabi, from December 4 to 6. These are precisely two races located in a region that remains surrounded by uncertainties due to conflicts in the Middle East.
Formula 2 itself makes a point of informing that the two rounds remain scheduled normally. Therefore, there is no announcement of cancellation.
But expanding Baku means adding another long race, and more points, to the championship before the paddock needs to return to the region at the end of the year.
It is hard not to look at this decision without considering the context. Formula 2 has a freedom that Formula 1 simply does not have.
And perhaps that is precisely the most interesting part of this story.
In F2 it is easier to change
A Formula 1 season is not built only by a sports calendar.
Each Grand Prix involves commercial contracts of enormous value, promoters, governments, sponsors, broadcasters, temporary structures, ticket sales, hospitality, logistics, and investments that often start years before the cars arrive on track.
This means that removing a race from the calendar is not simply erasing a date.
Someone needs to take the decision.
And, depending on contractual clauses and circumstances involved, someone may also need to bear the loss.
In Formula 2, although contracts and commercial interests obviously exist, the scale is different. The category functions as support for Formula 1 and has an incomparably smaller economic structure.
This allows moves that would be much more difficult in the main category.
That is precisely why the expansion of Baku draws attention.
Not because it confirms anything about Qatar or Abu Dhabi.
It does not confirm.
But because it shows what, sportingly, would be possible to do when there is greater freedom to adjust the calendar.
The 2026 season has already been affected by the conflict
There is still a fundamental element to understand why the current situation deserves attention: Formula 1 has already had to deeply change its calendar this very season.
The 2026 championship was originally announced with 24 rounds.
After Australia, China, and Japan, the schedule planned the Bahrain GP between April 10 and 12 and, the following week, the Saudi Arabia GP, between April 17 and 19.
These two events did not take place.
In March, after assessing the situation in the Middle East, Formula 1 confirmed that Bahrain and Saudi Arabia would not be held on the originally scheduled dates. At that time, it also informed that no race would replace the events during April.
The championship went directly from Japan to Miami.
But the Bahrain story did not end there.
The Bahrain GP will take place in Malaysia
Months later, Formula 1 and FIA found an extraordinary solution.
The Bahrain GP was moved to the Sepang circuit in Malaysia, where it will be held between October 2 and 4, after Azerbaijan and before Singapore.
And there is an important particularity.
It is not officially a new Malaysian GP replacing Bahrain.
The race remains the Bahrain GP. Its official name is Bahrain GP in Malaysia.
The agreement was built between Formula 1, FIA, the Bahrain government, and the Malaysian government to preserve a race that could not take place in its original location.
Formula 1 itself acknowledged, when announcing the change, that the agreement allowed maintaining a Grand Prix in the championship that otherwise would not have been held.
It is an extremely important precedent for the current discussion.
Saudi Arabia did not find a similar solution and was definitively removed from the 2026 calendar.
With that, the season that originally had 24 rounds now has 23.
Sepang will be the 16th of them.
Then will come Singapore, United States, Mexico, Brazil, and Las Vegas before the two races that remain under greater question: Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
The Sepang solution shows the size of the problem, and a possible way out
The move from Bahrain to Malaysia helps understand how Formula 1 tries to manage such a situation.
Simply canceling a Grand Prix means interfering with contracts of enormous value.
Finding another circuit willing to host the event, maintaining the involvement of the original promoter, and building an agreement among all parties can be a way to preserve the commercial commitment and, at the same time, remove the race from a region where there are security concerns.
That was exactly the path found for Bahrain.
But it is an exceptional solution.
Sepang already has a Formula 1 level structure, hosted the category between 1999 and 2017, and managed to enter the calendar with relatively little notice.
It is not simple to find another circuit capable of doing the same.
And, mainly, it is not simple to build the political and commercial agreement necessary for a race to continue belonging to the original promoter even when held in another country.
Therefore, the solution found for Bahrain does not mean that Qatar and Abu Dhabi can simply be transferred in the same way.
But it shows that Formula 1 is already working on extraordinary alternatives this season.
Qatar and Abu Dhabi remain on the calendar
It is important again to separate fact from interpretation.
At this moment, the official calendar still foresees the Qatar GP between November 27 and 29 and the Abu Dhabi GP between December 4 and 6.
Neither of the two races has been canceled.
They are, respectively, rounds 22 and 23 of the current calendar.
But it is also a fact that the regional situation has created doubts about holding the events and that Formula 1 and FIA are monitoring the scenario’s evolution before making a definitive decision.
The category itself has already publicly acknowledged that it intends to use the maximum available time to observe the situation.
And that is understandable.
The season is still in September. Qatar happens only at the end of November.
Anticipating a decision now could mean canceling events that, in two months, might be held normally.
Waiting, on the other hand, progressively reduces the time available to find alternatives.
It is a difficult equation.
Baku gained a different meaning
It is in this context that Formula 2’s decision becomes interesting.
The Azerbaijan round was already scheduled for September. The change did not bring forward Qatar or Abu Dhabi and also did not remove the two races from the calendar.
What happened was different.
Baku received an additional race.
The schedule will have one free practice, two consecutive qualifying sessions, one Sprint, and two Feature Races. Each qualifying will also award points for pole position, and the two main races will use the category’s conventional scoring.
In other words: a larger amount of points will be at stake before the trip to the Middle East.
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The official justification is perfectly plausible. F2 will be the only support category for the Azerbaijan GP and there is space in the schedule to hold the additional sessions.
But there is also an objective consequence.
If, for any reason, Qatar and Abu Dhabi do not happen, Formula 2 will have contested one more full race before reaching that eventuality.
It may not have been the intention.
But that is the effect.
A message that Formula 1 cannot give?
Here is where interpretation necessarily begins.
Perhaps F2’s decision allows seeing what Formula 1 would do if it were subject only to sporting needs.
Ensure as much of the championship as possible while there is certainty that the races can take place.
In F1, doing something similar is much more complicated.
Qatar and Abu Dhabi are not just two dates on a spreadsheet. They are events built on commercial contracts of enormous value.
Canceling a race in advance means making a decision with important financial consequences for all parties involved.
The Bahrain case itself helps demonstrate this.
Instead of simply abandoning the event after the April cancellation, Formula 1 spent months working to find a solution that would preserve the race. And it found an unusual alternative: holding the Bahrain GP thousands of kilometers from Bahrain.
This gives an idea of the commercial importance of these contracts.
Therefore, as long as there is a reasonable possibility of holding Qatar and Abu Dhabi safely, there is also a natural tendency to preserve the events and wait.
This does not mean that money will be placed above safety. If conditions are not considered adequate, Formula 1 simply will not race.
The issue is different.
Who makes this decision, when it is made, and under what contractual justification can make a huge financial difference.
Formula 1 has already faced this impasse
There is another historical example that helps understand why decisions of this kind can come so late.
Melbourne, March 2020.
The Covid-19 pandemic was already spreading worldwide when Formula 1 landed in Australia to open the season. Teams, drivers, press professionals, and thousands of fans traveled normally to the event.
Then a McLaren member tested positive.
The team announced its withdrawal from the GP.
From that moment, it became increasingly clear that holding the race would be practically impossible. Even so, for hours there were meetings and discussions about the event’s future.
The cancellation was only officially announced a few hours before the scheduled start of track activities.
Fans were already arriving at the circuit.
The situation was extraordinary but clearly showed how canceling a Grand Prix can be a much more complex decision than simply concluding that conditions are not adequate to hold it.
There is the sporting issue.
There is safety.
But there are also contracts and enormous commercial interests involved.
2020 showed like no other that no one wants to cancel prematurely
In hindsight, it seems evident that race in Australia could not take place.
At that moment, however, there were contracts, responsibilities, and consequences associated with the decision.
The result was a situation in which practically the entire paddock arrived in Melbourne before the event was finally stopped.
Formula 1 has learned a lot since then and the current situation is completely different from the pandemic.
But the commercial logic still exists.
Canceling a Grand Prix is one of the most expensive decisions the category can make.
Therefore, it will hardly happen before it is really necessary.
And the 2026 calendar itself offers two different examples of this logic.
Saudi Arabia left the championship.
Bahrain was preserved through an unprecedented solution in Sepang.
Now it remains to be seen what will happen with Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
And 2027 is already part of this story
There is still another consequence. The uncertainty does not end in December.
The 2027 calendar is in the process of being defined and the Middle East again plays an important role in the season planning.
Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are pointed to the start of the next championship, precisely the two events that could not take place at their circuits on the scheduled dates for 2026.
This creates a problem that goes beyond the last races of this year.
How to close the 2027 calendar while there are still relevant doubts about the ability to hold events in the region?
The most recent information indicates that the calendar publication is expected in the coming days, but the situation involving the Middle East continues to be one of the variables considered in the planning.
And there is an important difference compared to 2026.
Now Formula 1 already has practical experience of an alternative solution.
Sepang showed that, in exceptional circumstances, it is possible to preserve a Grand Prix even when it cannot be held in the originally planned country.
This expands the possibilities.
But it also shows the size of the effort needed to avoid a cancellation.
It is not confirmation, but it is a sign that deserves attention
It would be an exaggeration to say that Formula 2 expanded Baku because it knows Qatar and Abu Dhabi will be canceled.
There is no information that allows this conclusion.
It would be equally premature to say that the decision necessarily anticipates any move by Formula 1.
But ignoring the context would also be oversimplifying.
F2 added an additional race precisely in the last round before the two races that today carry the greatest doubts of the rest of its calendar.
It did so in a championship in which changing the schedule is commercially much simpler than in Formula 1.
And it did so during a season in which F1 itself has already had to find an extraordinary solution for an event affected by the situation in the Middle East.
The Saudi Arabia race was lost.
The Bahrain GP survived but had to travel to Sepang.
Qatar and Abu Dhabi remain confirmed. For now.
Perhaps there is no message at all in Formula 2’s change. Perhaps Baku simply had space in the schedule and the category decided to take advantage of it.
But it is also possible to see the decision as a small demonstration of what a competition does when it has the freedom to protect its championship sportingly in an uncertain scenario.
In Formula 1, this freedom costs much more.
And the fact that the championship reached the point of holding the Bahrain GP in Malaysia shows how far the category is willing to go to preserve a race.
Formula 2’s change does not say that Qatar and Abu Dhabi will be canceled.
But, given everything that has already happened in 2026, it also does not help to dispel the feeling that the last rounds of the season are still far from being completely guaranteed.
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And this uncertainty is already starting to reach the 2027 planning.
