Australian Grand Prix CEO Travis Auld has said that the Formula 1 season opener will go ahead as planned despite rising tensions in the Middle East.
Just a week out from the season-opener at the Albert Park Circuit, concerns regarding the opening half of the 2026 F1 season have arisen.
Over the weekend, the United States of America, Iran and Iraq have gone to war leaving the Middle East destabilised.
US military incursions reportedly killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the Country retaliating with ballistic missile launches over Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.
With tensions rising, and martial warfare, airspaces in the region closed and several neighbouring airports are also shut down.
Naturally, with the Bahrain GP scheduled in April, and the street race at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit just a week after, many questions have been raised about the fate of these events itself.
The FOM has released a statement however, insisting that a call would be taken after carefully monitoring the situation.
“Our next three races are in Australia, China and Japan not in the Middle East – those races are not for a number of weeks,” read the statement.
“As always we closely monitor any situation like this and work closely with relevant authorities.”
Australian GP will ‘not be impacted’ by Middle East escalations
While Australia sits on the other end of the world map, the season-opening Australian GP has also been called into question.
Teams, its personnel and equipment will have to be shipped from Europe to the Land Down Under, with the intervening airspace over the Middle East now highly volatile.
With the safety of the men and women of the paddock in danger, any call regarding the race in Melbourne going ahead would have to be a concerted and educated call.
Auld, however, is confident that F1 and the government authorities will thrash a way out to ensure that the race takes place with adequate safety measures in place.
“The events of the weekend have certainly meant there’s been some reshuffling of some travel plans,” he said on the Today Show.
“But the Formula 1 organisation are very good at moving people around the world. That’s what they do. And so they’ve been able to do that and we’re not expecting any impacts on our race.
“A lot of this is done by Formula 1. So you’re talking about teams, drivers, Formula 1 personnel. I’m guessing there’d be close to 1,000 people that would have already booked their flights and would be landing somewhere between sort of today, tomorrow, and Wednesday.
“So they had to all be changed. But they’ve been able to sort it out, is the important part. All the freight is here and ready to go. And so we’re in a space where we’re really confident there’ll be no impact.”
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