Formula 1 has told its 11 teams the 2026 season will still end in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, after Yamaha pulled out of this week’s MotoGP race in Qatar. Max Verstappen doesn’t see the paddock cracking over it. The message went out during the Mexico City Grand Prix weekend. F1 still plans to race at Lusail on November 29 and at Yas Marina on December 6.
The four-time world champion thinks F1 won’t follow MotoGP down that road. “I don’t think a situation similar to what happened in MotoGP will happen,” Verstappen said, according to Autoracing1. He added a catch, though: his view depends on the safety guarantees F1 can give and on what happens in the coming weeks.
Yamaha and its satellite team Pramac will skip the Qatar round, and MotoGP has threatened contract and sporting penalties. Both series now belong to Liberty Media, so the timing stings. F1 says neither the travel advice nor the insurance situation has changed since May, and it’s watching events closely, including the U.S. midterm elections.
F1 Asks Teams and Drivers to Trust the Plan
The message asks teams and drivers not to speak too critically in public, as F1 did earlier this year over the technical rules. Teams should trust F1 and the FIA and repeat the public line they’ve used for weeks. ESPN, which also saw the message, says it warns teams against getting dragged into media speculation.
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies showed how that sounds. He said F1 and the FIA hold the full set of information, so Red Bull relies on them to make the right call, and he added that they’ve got most of these calls right in the past. Williams team principal James Vowles voiced similar views.
F1 backs the message with a Plan B. Organizers at Imola got the green light more than six weeks ago to build temporary grandstands, and F1 has agreed to cover the costs if the circuit isn’t needed. The fallback date would be December 6, in Europe.
F1 also says it has evacuation plans at every race and has walked the teams through what would happen if they had to leave Qatar or Abu Dhabi in a hurry. One team source told ESPN that freight is moving as normal. With so much money involved, Autosport wrote, nobody wants to blink first.
F1 chief executive Stefano Domenicali set the tone in early October. He said everything was confirmed for Qatar and Abu Dhabi, and that 99% of the tickets in Abu Dhabi had sold.
Max Verstappen Walks a Careful Line on Qatar
Verstappen hasn’t always sounded this measured. Before the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, he said that with a war nearby, “I think we shouldn’t go,” as he told Viaplay, though he added the decision wasn’t his to make. GPblog reported at the time that his view put him at odds with seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton.
In October, Verstappen softened his position. Asked if he might boycott, he said he loves going to the region under the right terms, and that he trusts F1 and the FIA because they have more information than drivers do.
Mexico brought a lighter moment. When Dutch reporters raised the comments Carlos Sainz made in Austin, Verstappen laughed. “Someone will probably have had a word with him afterwards,” he said.
Sainz is the director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association. Before the U.S. Grand Prix, the Williams driver said it was “very difficult to be convinced right now” that F1 should race in the Middle East, but he reversed course in a statement less than two hours later. That statement said he trusts F1 and the FIA to put safety first.
Then Verstappen turned serious. “It also depends a bit on what they can guarantee in terms of safety,” he said. He added that you can say today you’re happy to go, but the region still isn’t entirely stable.
F1 wants one voice on this. Verstappen has given it one, but not without a footnote. The cars are due in Qatar in under four weeks.
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