There are concerns from many in the racing community that the Bahrain Formula One race should be postponed or cancelled. If this sounds like a story you've heard before, it is. The unrest in the Middle East hasn't subsided, as chaos and the unknown reign.
Formula One (F1) scheduled a grand prix last year but due to too many of those unknowns along with civil unrest and violence, led them to postpone and then cancel the Bahrain Grand Prix last year. The race was back on the schedule for April 22, 2012 as the fourth event of the F1 calendar.
Bahrain sits in the Persian Gulf between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. A shift of power from anarchy or worse has steadily risen on the small island nation. Last season's race was postponed and then cancelled because of this unrest in the region, specifically in Bahrain itself.
Without getting into a long dissertation on the politics of the country and region, suffice to say, the 'Arab Spring' of 2011 along with global turmoil, entangled this once peaceful nation, making its future murky at this point. The country declared elections in the past decade and those determinations have led to a rise in Islamist parties, which in turn has created political battles that have fomented the strife and conflict.
Bombing
Situated on the main island, the circuit lies in the west central part of the country, south of the capital of Manama. To emphasize the seriousness of the problem, just yesterday, a terrorist bomb exploded roughly 20 minutes from the race track in the town of Akr, south of the capital, injuring seven police (source - BBC).
And that doesn't make race teams eager to visit the wealthy country. The series heads to China this week in preparation for this coming weekend Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai; but all eyes are on the following week's race scheduled in Bahrain. The teams have conveyed to the FIA, who oversees the sport that they'd like to see the April 22 race either postponed or cancelled (source - The Guardian).
The owners are adamant said one team representative who remained anonymous: "If I'm brutally frank, the only way they can pull this race off without incident is to have a complete military lock-down there. And I think that would be unacceptable …"
Bernie Ecclestone who is the CEO of F1 said the teams are free to do what they want - seemingly washing his hands of the circumstances, except to say if the teams don't appear at the race, they would be in violation of their contracts (source - Yahoo! News).
The Bahraini government has proclaimed a return to a status quo, just as it was before the uprisings of last year. This is an important event for Bahrain to show the world that they have control and that politics will not interfere with the race. The recent bombing might say otherwise but either way, an intense situation heightens. Pressure mounts as the world awaits.
Sources - Formula One, Fox News
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Daryle has been involved in motorsports most of his life and has three decades of experience inside racemarketing, plus blogged about every type of racing for several years.
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