Hamilton Wants the F1 Season to End in the Gulf, and Ferrari Waits on the Calendar

Lewis Hamilton said he hopes Formula One can still end its season at the two scheduled rounds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, with the finale in doubt because of the war in the region, according to the Guardian. "I love going to the Middle East," the Ferrari driver said, adding that he wants to go. The Guardian reported that both races could still be cancelled.

The remark puts the championship's closing stretch back on the agenda at a moment when the title fight is being led by Kimi Antonelli. The Italian driver, who told BBC Sport this week that a 2024 crash "stayed in my head for a very long time" and that he is still finding his way in Formula One, holds the championship lead. A calendar that loses one or both Gulf rounds would fall to be redrawn by the sport's owners and the FIA, not by the teams, and no replacement venue has been named in the coverage.

For Maranello, the question is practical rather than sentimental. Ferrari's season has been built around a car developed across a long European summer and a flyaway finish; where those final points are decided shapes how the team spends the last of its development budget and how it plans its travel and freight. The Guardian's report does not say that any decision has been taken, only that the two rounds remain uncertain.

Hamilton's own position is unusual. He is a Ferrari driver speaking about a region his team has raced in for years, and his preference carries little weight over a decision made by the commercial rights holder and the governing body. What it does is give a public voice to a question the paddock has been handling privately: whether a season that has already run long should be asked to end 4,000 kilometres from its European base, or whether the sport should find a closer finish.

The Guardian's report frames the doubt as a consequence of the war in the region, and names Qatar and Abu Dhabi as the rounds at risk. It does not report a deadline, a contingency plan or a substitute. Until one of those appears, teams can only plan for two versions of the last weeks of the year — the one on the published calendar and the one they may be handed instead.

There is a sporting dimension to the uncertainty as well. Late-season rounds in the Gulf have repeatedly decided championships, and a redrawn finish would change the sequence of circuits on which the title is settled. For a leader like Antonelli, who has spoken about still learning his car, the character of the closing tracks matters: a run of unfamiliar or hastily arranged venues is a different test from the one the calendar originally set.

Ferrari, for its part, has said nothing in the foreign coverage about its own preference. The team's interest is straightforward — a stable calendar allows a stable development plan, and a cancelled round removes a race weekend's worth of data. That is the extent of what the wire supports. The rest is a waiting game played out in public by a driver who has made his own view clear.