Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Hollywood loves sequels, but I am not sure F1 fans do. The situation in Bahrain is worse now than when they cancelled last year, with demonstrators becoming more violent. As many pointed out, that is what happens if you repress reasonable dissent. The Bahrain Government had only to look to Israel and Gazza, or Northern Ireland, to see just two situations where a majority is not represented. If the human rights activist now on hunger strike dies then we can only imagine what will happen.

How did it get to this, again? Who put this race back on the calendar and why? Bernie has to submit the calendar to the FIA, and I guess he has a contract with Bahrain so is obliged to, but could have chosen not to and borne the consequences. As it is the FIA agreed, and we are all now seeing the consequences. Thanks to a major PR campaign the lid was kept on the teams this year, we were all going to go, except now it is a week away and people are being shot and bombs going off and the cracks in that unity have appeared. One hero who did not want to be named said that the teams want it cancelled. Do the Bahrain Government own so much of F1 and the FIA that everyone is scared of them?

Bernie comes out today and says that the teams don't have to go if they don't want to. Really? At what price? Isn't that what the Concorde Agreement is about, you have to show up? None of the drivers have said a word this year, very strange. The only way the safety of people at the event can be guaranteed is for the place to be an armed camp. Unless you have police or troops linking arms along the track fence you are never going to stop someone climbing a fence. Remember the suffragette who threw herself under the King's horse at the start of the last century? More recently the idiot at Silverstone, and apparently someone tried to disrupt The Boat Race last weekend. I've seen the end of the Suzuka 8 Hour when the crowd comes over the debris fence, and of course who can forget the first Phillip Island MotoGP?

That's just at the track, presumably they are not going to camp there so need to be able to get in and out. Do they have that many troops? Far from being a unifying event I can only see it dividing the country more.

The FIA are missing in action , again. They are monitoring the situation. Someone needs to find enough courage to stand up and say "We're not going." Then we need to find some answers as to why someone thought this was a good idea in the first place.