For Race Organizers, the Show Must Go On in Bahrain

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/sports/autoracing/20iht-srf1prix20.html

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Formula One returns this weekend to the scene of what in recent years has been its most unpopular, tense and controversial race. Organizers and teams are perhaps a little smarter, confident and relaxed than last year, but they are still on edge and hoping that the lessons of the 2012 race in the troubled Gulf state will be confirmed.

On Friday, Formula One’s governing body and the series’ commercial rights holder, Bernie Ecclestone, said in a joint statement that Bahrain was a safe place to race and that the Grand Prix will go ahead as planned on Sunday.

The Bahrain government canceled the race in April 2011 amid the Arab Spring uprising, but decided last year that the race could go ahead, even though unrest continued and the country had failed to resolve social problems.

At the time, it seemed for a few tense weeks as if Formula One organizers had lost any sense of decency or business acumen. As race weekend approached, demonstrations by the Shiite majority against the Sunni-led government were not only increasing in frequency and violence, but some targeted the race itself.

The government had billed the race as an event that would pull the country together and show the world that life and business were normal in Bahrain. But pro-democracy opposition groups protested, saying the race gave support to a repressive regime that ignored the needs of the majority of the citizens.

To worldwide condemnation, and ignoring pleas by British politicians and international organizations like Amnesty International, Formula One decided to honor its contract with Bahrain. The race was staged on the premise that sports should not be politicized and that despite the portrayal by the media of a country in chaos, Bahrain was a safe place for the teams, spectators and media to visit.

Formula One organizers and teams are saying the same thing about the race this year.

Last year, what Bahrain had not bargained for was that in refusing visas to foreign reporters wanting to cover the uprising, it was the sports journalists who had come to focus on the race who ended up reporting on the unrest.

The Bahrain government may have wanted to use the race as a showcase, but the opposition and the demonstrators got the better deal. Until race day, the world’s media was filled with images not of peaceful, business-as-usual life in Manama, the capital city, nor of the racetrack with its Formula One cars carrying out their sport as usual, but of angry mob scenes and demonstrations.

All parties in the conflict — the government, the demonstrators and the opposition — and even the average man or woman in the street, sought to use the media attention around Formula One to voice their side of the story. International organizations also released statements or studies of the situation in Bahrain to coincide with the race.

It became clear to the sports journalists and most of the Formula One teams that unless they went looking for demonstrations far from the track, they would find no violence, no mobs, few soldiers or armored vehicles, and life in their area was indeed going on as usual.

Despite protests against holding the Formula One race, representatives from all sides also said that Bahrain needed the race economically.

As Martin Whitaker, the former director of the circuit from its inception in 2004 to 2010, whose company, Sportique88, now helps the Bahrain government use sport to promote the country, said in an interview last month, “It is the biggest sporting, social and business event that takes place every year.”

The Grand Prix’s value to the country was acknowledged repeatedly by one of the main opposition leaders on a visit to the track, and by others.

Since the race last year, there have been many other international sporting events in Bahrain, but none that have such “selling power” as Formula One.

There was, for example, the Sail Arabia yachting event in February, which started in Bahrain and involved nine teams sailing yachts around the Gulf from one state to another. In January, Bahrain hosted the Gulf Cup of Nations, a regional soccer tournament.

The political problems have not ceased, however, and Bahrain remains in the thick of its social upheaval. Negotiations between the government and the opposition began again in February, and the move in March to appoint Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa as first deputy prime minister was seen as a way to improve the negotiations, as he is considered to be a softer, more open man than his more hard-line father, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.

The opposition, meanwhile, is staging a series of peaceful demonstrations during the race weekend this year.

“These demonstrations show that the movement continues and the demands have not been met yet,” Khalil al-Marzouq, a leader of the main opposition group Wefaq, told Reuters on Wednesday. “Obviously, the presence of the media for the Formula One helps shed the spotlight on Bahrain.”

Within Formula One, there was little talk at the Chinese Grand Prix last weekend of the impending race in Bahrain. The subject has gone on the back-burner for Christian Horner, director of the leading Red Bull team, whose drivers had been involved in a racing controversy at the previous race. One of the drivers refused to obey team orders and passed the other driver to win the race.

“I’ve got enough problems with my drivers, let alone Bahrain,” Horner said when asked during a press conference about the impending race in the troubled country. “We’ve got our own issues.”

Franz Tost, team director of the Toro Rosso team, echoed to some extent the positions of Ecclestone and the F.I.A.

“I don’t see any problems going to Bahrain, like it was last year,” he said. “I’m looking forward to going there. I think that it’s very important to race over there. Formula One is entertainment. We should not be involved in politics. We should go there, we should do our race, we should be concentrated there and the political side and political topics should be solved by someone else.”

Monisha Kaltenborn, director of the Sauber team, also backed the organizers.

“The thoughts we have had are exactly the same ones we had last year,” she said. “That it is still the responsibility of our federation and the promoter and the commercial rights holder to decide where the race takes place, and if they deem the conditions to be right, then we will go there.”

In the end, despite the negative portrayal the media had created last year, the Formula One officials were proven to be right: Bahrain was a safe enough place to go to for the race. Where Formula One was wrong, however, was in believing that it could avoid being used by the various sides in Bahrain’s conflict.

“The beauty of sport is that sport is a great leveler,” Whitaker said. “It crosses all divides, and as a direct result there are advantages of sport which percolate all the way down through the community. So it is not just about business.”