Toyota and Hyundai's travel bans end the WRC season a round early
The FIA cancelled Rally Saudi Arabia after two of its three manufacturers would not fly
The FIA removed Rally Saudi Arabia from the 2026 World Rally Championship on 17 September and will not replace it, so the season ends at Rally Italia Sardegna on 1 to 4 October, thirteen rounds instead of fourteen. The Jeddah finale was set for 11 to 14 November. It fell days after Toyota and Hyundai told the FIA that company-wide travel policies bar their staff from the Middle East, which left M-Sport Ford as the only Rally1 team still willing to go.
Toyota and Hyundai pulled out before the British Foreign Office changed its Jeddah advice on 16 September
Toyota and Hyundai informed the FIA days before the announcement that their team members cannot travel to the Middle East under company-wide travel policies, before any official decision existed. M-Sport Ford was prepared to travel as late as last week, on the basis that the British Foreign Office rated Jeddah and its surroundings safe. On Wednesday 16 September that advice changed to warn against travel to parts of Saudi Arabia, days after missiles hit Aramco's oil facility at Yanbu, about 300 km up the Red Sea coast from the rally base. An all-gravel Rally Catalunya had been discussed as a stand-in finale, but the Spanish organisers' deadline passed late last week without a decision.
Elfyn Evans leads Sami Pajari by 17 points with 35 left in Sardinia
Elfyn Evans leads Toyota team-mate Sami Pajari by 17 points and Oliver Solberg by 21, with a maximum of 35 on offer in Sardinia: 25 for the Saturday classification, five for Sunday and five for the Power Stage. Evans can therefore still be caught by either rival, and a Welsh title would be Britain's first since Richard Burns in 2001. In WRC2 the maths are already done: Robert Virves leads Yohan Rossel by 32 points with 25 available, so the Toksport Skoda driver is champion without turning a wheel in Italy.
The ten-year Saudi deal has run one rally, and Formula E still plans Jeddah on 17 December
Rally Saudi Arabia joined the WRC in 2025 as the first round of a ten-year agreement signed in 2024, and closed that season as the finale, so the contract has delivered one rally in two years. WRC Promoter chief executive Eric Boullier says it returns in 2027, and the Saudi federation says the Kingdom was ready to host and that nothing has changed in its readiness. The event itself goes ahead on 12 to 15 November as a round of the FIA Middle East Rally Championship. Formula E is holding the same line for its Gen4 opener at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit on 17 to 19 December: the championship says it intends to start there and does not need to decide until pre-season testing in Madrid in mid-November.
Formula 1 still sells Qatar on 29 November and Abu Dhabi on 6 December, past its own deadline
Formula 1 has already lost Bahrain and Saudi Arabia this year, both called off in April, and Sepang stands in for Bahrain next month. Qatar on 29 November and the Abu Dhabi finale on 6 December remain on the calendar with tickets on sale, even though chief executive Stefano Domenicali set a mid-September deadline in July for any change, and that date has passed without an announcement. Imola is the replacement most consistently reported, by GPblog among others, and MotoGP has already moved its Qatar round from April to November. Formula 1 nonetheless published a 2027 calendar on 16 September with four Middle East rounds, opening in Bahrain on 14 March, with Aramco and Qatar Airways among its largest sponsors.
The Dakar starts in Saudi Arabia on 1 January, and Toyota named its hydrogen Hilux partners on 16 September
The Dakar Rally has run in Saudi Arabia every year since 2020, and the 2027 edition is scheduled for 1 to 15 January, with factory programmes from Toyota, Ford, Dacia and Defender. Promoter Amaury Sport Organisation is expected to decide within days, and KTM adviser Heinz Kinigadner told Speedweek he personally expects a cancellation. Toyota's position is the awkward one. On 16 September, in the same week its rally team told the FIA it could not send people to the Middle East, Toyota Gazoo Racing announced the official partners for its hydrogen fuel-cell Hilux at the 2027 Dakar, an event due to start in the same country seven weeks after the rally it could not attend.
AutoNext Take
The decision that mattered was taken in Toyota's and Hyundai's head offices, not at the FIA. Once two of the three Rally1 manufacturers said their people would not fly, the governing body was left to sign a cancellation the teams had already made, and its ten-year Saudi contract now runs on the goodwill of corporate travel desks. Formula 1 has to read that precedent. Its 2026 grid carries seven car makers, Audi, Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, Honda, Ford and General Motors, and the two policies that emptied Jeddah cover the Middle East, not one country. Qatar and Abu Dhabi sit in the same region.
Formula 1's own mid-September deadline has passed, and the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on 26 September is the next race weekend. If no replacement finale has been named by the end of it, the last two rounds are staying on the calendar for Aramco and Qatar Airways rather than for the mechanics. The Dakar answers sooner: ASO is expected to rule within days on a 1 January start, and Toyota will have to say whether the travel policy that emptied Jeddah in November applies to the same desert in January. We expect it does.
