First of all, sorry for the long absence. I've had a lengthy spell where everything I've wanted to write has been either live-commenting or small enough to fit in a tweet or two. Neither fits my blogging style. I'll try not to let 10-week absences happen again.

Fury ignited this entry. It's the ongoing situation in Bahrain. Up until now, it's been a matter of ethics and safety whether F1 goes or not. Thanks to the Bahrain organiser's actions, it's become a matter of regulations.

I speak of the "UniF1ed" campaign - something which apparently has been happening for a while but only came to my attention last night.  The organisers of the race may or may not have originated the campaign, but they are enthusiastically participating in it. Little do they appear to realise that they have endangered their race by doing so.

I draw your attention to the tagline "One Nation in Celebration". The pedants among you will deem this false - F1 is a worldwide event so, barring disaster, "Many Nations In Celebration" would be more accurate. The font used for it on the poster is difficult to read, but that's even more nit-picky. The big problem, however, is that it expresses a link between F1 and national unity. 

Linking F1 and national unity probably doesn't seem that big a problem. It may even seem close enough to pro-social and "sport is good" themes to be helpful. I can only assume that was what the organisers thought when they decided to go down that path. Unfortunately for them, Article 1 of the FIA Statutes (PDF), in wording combined with its application and the reason for its existence, indicates otherwise.

Article 1 of the FIA Statutes says, among other things:

"The FIA shall refrain from manifesting racial, political or religious discrimination in the course of its activities and from taking any action in this respect."

Many thanks to the Midweek Motorsports Listener Collective on Facebook, particularly with regard to finding an ad in the campaign that further demonstrates the link the organisers are making between F1 and politics.

You may be wondering why I am using "linking F1 and politics" as synonymous with the "racial, political and religious discrimination" actually mentioned in Article 1 of the FIA Statutes. This is down to two things: the way Article 1 has been implemented and the reason Article 1 is required to exist.

The most recent use of Article 1  was to convict the Turkish GP organisers (TOSFED) of using the 2006 podium ceremony for political gain. Mehmet Ali Talat presented one of the trophies. This in and of itself wasn't a breach of Article 1. Had he been described as the regional governor of Turkish Cyprus, everything would have been fine (except for possible grumblings within Cyprus and Turkey). However, he was described as the head of state of the Republic of Cyprus, a state not recognised by the UN but is recognised by Turkey. That was deemed a breach of Article 1 of the FIA Statutes and of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code. This was for a one-off incident that was relatively subtle in its political aims and, importantly, did not connote political discrimination, only express a controversial political point. 

Yes, part of the fine was for Article 151c, but a more significant breach of Article 1 would be sufficient for any penalty the FIA has to be levied. The "UniF1ed" campaign is clearly not a casual breach, nor is it a question of tick-boxing. Article 35 b) specifically mentions that any club not acting according to the expectations of the FIA (including by breaking any of the Statutes) can be struck off the roll. That is to say, the entire club and all associated activities can be dissolved. Obviously, this would include the very Grand Prix Bahrain was attempting to protect.

There is nothing in the Statute that requires a political statement to be true or demonstrable in order for it to be usable. Technically speaking, even explicit FIA approval wouldn't work, unless the message was specifically against racial, political or religious discrimination. "UniF1ed" isn't. Instead it is a message suggesting political unity already exists, which doesn't meet the exemption requirement. 

As for why Article 1 of the FIA Statutes exists, it's mandatory for non-political organisations registered in France. This is because anti-discrimination and apolitical approaches are considered key elements in the sorts of groups France allows to be registered with them. If the FIA overlooks a breach of Article 1, it is under serious risk of being sent to the French civil courts and penalised. Dissolution is entirely possible, as is a large fine and (at least partial) loss of its autonomy over judging its own motorsports events.

That would open the door to everything from pitlane speeders to technical flouters to use the civil courts to challenge every single decision the FIA makes. Motorsport would grind to a halt. That assumes a lack of dissolution - that scenario would obviously have a serious deletrious effect on every branch of motorsport, including ones that never in a million years considered going to Bahrain.

Clearly none of this is in any motorsport fan's interest. It certainly doesn't help Bahrain organisers any! 

There is no longer any need to reference political strife or anyone's safety to justify not going to Bahrain. Regulations now demand refusal to race - and refusal to support the race. Many have suggested this be done in the form of a boycott.

Thanks to the combined efforts of Sky (inaccessible, unaffordable and unethical) and BBC Radio (unintelligible in the races), I won't have a choice about watching the race. The most I'd have been able to do was follow it on Twitter. Having already had the difficult bit taken out of my hands, I am quite happy to boycott the 2012 Bahrain Grand Prix completely. The powers-that-be have already demonstrated they don't care about viewer figures due to sending the UK live rights to Sky, so I doubt the boycott will achieve anything. 

For that matter, I'm not convinced the situation is safe enough to enable a viable attempt to hold the 2012 Bahrain GP. If inviability makes for a race cancellation on force majuere (which incidentally has to be done by the FIA if there is to be a Bahrain 2013), that would be helpful in the short term.

The breach of Statute would make the validity of copyright use of "F1" within "UniF1ed" questionable too. The licence the organisers have to include F1 in their marketing would surely not include uses in materials breaching the regulations, particularly ones underpinned by law. Some of the cases Bernie has lost on the topic mean there is not sufficient evidence for certainty in either direction. Even so, that wouldn't be Bahrain's biggest likely problem.

Its biggest problem in that scenario is that Bahrain would likely lose the race... ...on account of there being no viable authority to contract the race from in the first place. 

For these reasons, it is wrong to support a race that's being used to support political strife in contravention of Article 1 of the FIA Statutes. As in, it's such a big contravention that, at minimum, the FIA will lose its ability to be the first and final place of judgment for matters involving its own series (everything would have to be made subject to the French civil courts). The French courts are rather sensitive about the whole "no politics" thing for non-political organisations. The moment Bahrain's organisers issued the "UniF1ed" ad campaign, it was in contravention of the regulations. That the FIA has (so far) let that campaign go ahead without comment is contemptible and puts the FIA - and every single series it runs, including those who'd never have gone to Bahrain in a million years - in a very vulnerable position.

It's in F1's and the FIA's interest not to wait for force majuere to come into effect, but to protect themselves by cancelling on the grounds of FIA Statute Article 1 breaches.

Until then... ...I don't see why I should have to applaud or condone the FIA's attempted self-destruction.

The FIA caused some unexpected action yesterday. It pointed out that several teams, particularly Ferrari, Mercedes and Force India, were in some error concerning their overalls and they were going to enforce the regulations as of this race.

It is the first and probably last time anyone outside motorsport paddocks cared about the contents of Appendix III of the FIA Standard 8856-2000. Specifically, the label confirming the suit complies with this high safety standard "must be embroidered onto the outermost layer of the outer garment". Ironically, using a different method to indicate compliance means that the FIA no longer considers those overalls compliant due to not indicating their status correctly.

By not using thread, some were saving a little weight. Ferrari, Mercedes and Force India's drivers all went to scrutineering in Germany with overalls not in compliance with the regulations in this respect. It is unclear how many teams would not have been in compliance had overalls intended for Saturday and Sunday been checked as well (drivers often use a different overall each day for freshness and weight reasons).

It may seem a nit-picky regulation, but it ensures the compliance sign is clear throughout the life of the overall. Thread is harder-wearing than even the best screen-printing, even though in the case of a F1 overall the wear difference is not really tested. The surprise is that it took so long for the overall manufacturers to come into compliance and for the FIA to notice there was a problem. I find it hard to believe that this is the first time all year someone has turned up with a screen-printed compliance logo. Maybe it just proves different scrutineers focus on different potential problems.

The FIA's recent regulation changes (technically not permitted as it is mid-season and not safety-related, but not a battle the teams chose to fight)  include giving 10-place grid drops to any driver getting three reprimands in a season. Article 18.2 says that drivers receiving 3 reprimands in a season will receive a 10-place grid drop at the next race where it is possible to enforce the penalty. 

It is unclear whether penalties more severe than reprimands will be counted towards the three. What is known is that being late to the driver's parade or press conference 3 times won't trigger the 10-place grid drop - at least 2 of the reprimands must be for dodgy on-track driving of some description. All grid drops will be in addition to any fines or other penalties deemed appropriate at the time of the incidents.

Counting starts as of the British Grand Prix, so even if a driver had 100 reprimands beforehand (as it feels as if Lewis Hamilton's had) will not be penalised for having a somewhat wild early season. 

I intend to log penalties after each race to enable us to figure out who's where along the route to grid drops. Each race, I will list steward's investigations as indicated on the FIA website and on other reputable sites. For each driver who has been subject to such an investigation, I will list how many reprimands (with "procedural" reprimands such as missing the driver parade in brackets), incidents attracting more than reprimands and investigations where no penalty was given. Reprimands are the lowest penalty the FIA can give, so there is no need for a "penalties less than a reprimand" category. 

Try not to worry if you see your favourite driver with a long list of "investigations", for I intend to include any incident where they were cited in the investigation. It may be more helpful to think of it as a "trouble magnet" score than a "trouble causer" one. If your driver (or team) does not appear at all, they haven't been involved in anything that has attracted the stewards' attention so far.

Some penalties do not appear to be put onto the FIA website. As far as possible, I will track these too, linking to where I found out the infraction had occurred. 

Teams aren't affected by this directly, but I decided to track their penalties too. Just because I felt like it. Also in the "just because I felt like it" category is the steward tracker, giving who's done how many races and where. Both start counting from the British Grand Prix.

Note: all links are to the FIA document unless otherwise indicated. They won't work after the build-up to next race unless you have a password, but I don't know anywhere else that keeps copies of the original documents on the internet. 

Stewards this meeting:

Nigel Mansell, Nicholas Deschaux, Lars Osterlind and Dennis Carter. 

Steward tracker: 

Once this year:

Nigel Mansell, Nicholas Deschaux, Lars Osterlind and Dennis Carter. 

Incidents this race:

DRS activation in (wet) FP1 session (document 18)

Regulation(s) cited: None

Involved: Mark Webber and Lewis Hamilton

Verdict: No further action required (possible glitch?)

Unsafe release of Jenson Button in race (document 43)

Regulation(s) cited: Article 23.1 (j), Sporting Regulations

Involved: Jenson Button

Verdict: €5000 fine for McLaren, but no penalty for Button (he parked as soon as practicable, but a badly-attached wheelnut is a badly-attached wheelnut)

Unsafe release of Jenson Button in race (document 44)

Regulation(s) cited: Article 23.1 (j), Sporting Regulations

Involved: Kamui Kobayashi

Verdict: €20000 fine for Sauber, but no penalty for Kobayashi (fine possibly bigger than McLaren's due to Pastor Maldonado being lightly hit and a Force India airgun being broken, but Kamui not deemed to have aggravated the incident)

Collision between Kobayashi and Schumacher (grandprix.com race report)

Regulation(s) cited: None (Article 16 Sporting Regulations implied)

Involved: Kamui Kobayashi and Michael Schumacher

Verdict: 10-second stop/go for Schumacher. No penalty for Kobayashi 

Driver penalty tracker:

Mark Webber

Reprimands: 0

Penalties exceeding reprimand: 0

Investigations: 1 (DRS FP1 - Britain)

Lewis Hamilton

Reprimands: 0

Penalties exceeding reprimand: 0

Investigations: 1 (DRS FP1 - Britain)

Jenson Button

Reprimands: 0

Penalties exceeding reprimand: 0

Investigations: 1 (Unsafe release - Britain)

Michael Schumacher

Reprimands: 0

Penalties exceeding reprimand: 1 (10-second stop/go for collision with Kobayashi - Britain)

Investigations: 0

Kamui Kobayashi

Reprimands: 0

Penalties exceeding reprimand: 0

Investigations: 2 (Unsafe releae & collision with Schumacher - Britain) 

Team penalty tracker:  

McLaren 

Reprimands: 0

Penalties exceeding reprimand: 1 (€5000 fine for unsafe release - Button - Britain) 

Investigations: 0

Sauber

Reprimands: 0

Penalties exceeding reprimand: 1 (€20000 fine for unsafe release - Kobayashi - Britain) 

Investigations: 0 

Contents

In Article 28, "Homologated parts" has been dropped from the title after being added in 2010. Seems quite odd, since I had expected there to be some homologated parts.

Article 16

The stewards have been granted wider-ranging powers under Article 16.2. Stewards may now issue post-race time penalties of any length for an incident under Article 16.2 c). Reprimands, exclusion from results and one-race suspension have also been included, though all three of these powers were already granted to the stewards under the International Sporting Code. The reprimands in particular were already commonly used. However, the one-race suspension has to be for the next event, which was not previously the case (before the suspension could be applied at any time, which was useful because it allowed time for teams to appeal against unfair uses of the power).

The only completely new power is the ability to issue post-race time penalties of any length. However, the new specifics of the suspension power worry me.

Article 20

A dramatic number of additions have been made to Article 20. In 2010, there was only one sentence: "The driver must drive the car alone and unaided". Now there are four paragraphs. Therefore the following actions have been formally banned:

- Actions that could hinder other drivers
- More than one blocking move per straight
- Leaving the circuit boundaries (defined as four wheels beyond the track edges, kerbs being outside the edges)
- Rejoining the track in a dangerous manner
- Rejoining the track having gained an advantage from leaving it
- Ignoring blue flags

Those of you who have been following F1 for a while will notice that all of those things were already prohibited. This is because they are in the International Sporting Code, with the exception of defining kerbs as not being part of the circuit (it's left to the interpretation of individual series). The additions strike me as pointless repetition.

Article 22

It has been decided that "chequered flag procedures must be respected" in testing. Technically speaking, testing isn't subject to the International Sporting Code, but red flag procedures already had to be respected. It's a sensible addition, but not one that's likely to change anything.

Article 23

There have been several changes of wording in Article 23.1 a) - "shall" has been changed to "will", the first "is" becomes the grammatically-improved "will be" and the second "is" also becomes "will be", which not only corrects the tense but also the number. Pedants everywhere will rejoice.

More importantly, Article 23.1 a) now says the "fast lane" in the pits cannot be more than 3.5 metres. In wider pit lanes, this will give the mechanics considerably more room in which to work.

Article 23.1 d) has a paragraph for the order in which cars should queue up out of the pits. They must queue up in the "fast lane" only, in the order they got there, and leave in the same order unless a car is delayed. It does not clearly answer the question of what happens if someone chooses to do a practise start.

The reference for the circumstances in which equipment can be left in the pit lane has been corrected in Article 23.1 h). It's permitted only if a car has to go to the pits between the pit lane closing and the start of the race.

An important change has been made to Article 23.1 j). Teams must provide a way of knowing when a car was released from a pit stop. This must be visible from the front of the car (implying that both the driver and the on-board camera must be able to spot this indicator). As a result, expect many fewer near-collisions in the pits and less work for the stewards to do when it comes to deciding who was wrong in the remaining cases.

Article 23.2 allows the pit lane to be closed for safety reasons. An example of when this might be done is if a car has broken down in such a way as to block the entire pit entry. Cars can still enter the pits, but only for essential and obvious repair work - perhaps to replace a puncture or a broken front wing. How that would work with the above example is unclear, but the power may still prove useful.

Article 25

Article 25.1 has been updated to indicate that the current tyre manufacturer (Pirelli) will be the sole supplier until the end of 2013.

Tyres will be considered used once they've left the pit lane according to article 25.4. Since that was already being applied in F1 on an informal basis, nothing will change, but codifying informal rules into demonstrable regulations is generally a good idea.

Articles 25.4 a) and b) have been reworded to give the FIA technical director responsibility for allocating tyres to drivers in practise sessions.

A paragraph has been inserted to deal with those situations whereby a race ends prematurely but some drivers haven't used both compounds of dry-weather tyre (assuming that driver also hasn't used a wet-weather tyre). Any driver in that situation will receive a 30-second time penalty, which is the equivalent of a stop/go penalty. Completing a normal-length race while only using one dry-weather compound (and no wet-weather ones) still means exclusion.

Article 26

Cars in Q3 will no longer be weighed during the session due to a modification to Article 26.1 a) 2). It's not clear any cars were ever weighed in the 10-minute version of Q3, but it's a good safeguard.

The reason cars in Q3 definitely won't be weighed is because Article 26.1 a) 5) makes it compulsory for all cars in Q3 to be weighed at the end of the session, either with the driver on board (as per Q1 and Q2 weighings) or separately (as per post-race weighing).

Article 28

Gearboxes must last five races instead of four due to a slight change in the wording of Article 28.6 a).

If a driver cannot start a race, does not have a substitute starting the race for them and the reason is not a penalty from the stewards, that driver is allowed to have a new gearbox next race, just the same as they would have done if they had started but failed to finish. Several parts of Article 28.6 have been modified to account for this, but it is Article 28.6 a) which rules the change in.

Dog rings on gearboxes may be changed if a gearbox changed is required during the first day of practise. This will give a little bit more flexibility to teams in the latter part of the season because they can use different gearboxes for the first day's running that are not part of the main sequence.

Article 28.6 f) will allow one additional change of gearbox outside the permissions granted without penalty. This is similar to the exemption granted for the first engine change in 2007 and could signal a transition to the "X gearboxes a season" system currently in use for engines.

Importantly, Article 28.7 has gone. Teams are now allowed to change their survival cell, wheels and crash structures whenever they like after the first race of the season, subject to normal crash testing if it's a survival cell or crash structure. Hopefully, this will prevent a repeat of the F-duct situation, where the inability to modify the monocoque meant teams were using any old hole anywhere in the cockpit for the devices, to the detriment of usability and potentially safety. Also, large differences in the handling of the wheel specifications should be easy to resolve - Ferrari got an advantage on other teams from having a particularly unusual wheel psuedo-fairing that could not inspire any improved efforts from elsewhere all season.

Article 29

Article 29.3 has had the indent removed for consistency reasons. No difference to anything on track, but much more pleasing to the eye.

Article 30

A new Article 30.3 has been inserted. Unnecessarily slow, erratic and dangerous driving is banned at all times. The International Sporting Code already bans all of the above, but this echoes and emphasises the wording used for the Article 40.5 regulation covering proper driving conduct behind the Safety Car.

More importantly, all driving between the pit exit and pit entry (defined by their respective Safety Car lines) must now be done in 145% of the fastest whole-lap time set in the first day of practise. In practise this will typically mean that nobody can do a lap in more than 150% of the time the fastest driver lapped. This appears to be designed to prevent people from trying to get severely damaged cars to the pits, doing particularly thoughtless mass blocking or doing really slow in- or out-laps (or really slow formation laps, for that matter). Laps in wet-weather running are also affected but the margin is so big that an honest lap that was too slow would indicate the session should be stopped for wet weather reasons. Note that if a slow lap is due to a problem on the main straight or in the pits (such as stalling), that delay wouldn't influence anything because of the pit straight being ignored.

Between 10 and 4 hours before the start of first and third practises, nobody from any of the teams may be at the circuit. Each team is allowed four individual exemptions per year (that is to say, four people can work overnight for one race each, or at one race a four-person squad could be present at night). It is difficult to work on a car with only four people, so all but the most urgent and straightforward all-night shifts for mechanics have now been banned. Finally people associated with teams can (usually) be assured of a half-decent night's sleep!

Article 34

Under Article 34.1, wheel fasteners may be attached and removed in parc fermé. Pitot tubes may be covered and uncovered in parc ferme but only if a change in the weather has been declared.

Article 35

The compulsory autograph signing session is now at a time and place determined by each individual promoter and does not have to happen on the first day of practise. Procedures will also be determined locally. It will be interesting to see what is done with the new freedoms.

Article 36

The 107% rule in qualifying can be found in Article 36.3. Drivers whose fastest qualifying lap is more than 107% off the fastest time set in Q1 will only be allowed to start at the discretion of the stewards and no appeals (either way) will be permitted. The stewards are at liberty to decide the order if multiple people miss the 107% benchmark and get re-admitted in the same race.

Article 38

Drivers on their formation lap will have to keep to the pit lane speed limit until they pass the pole position slot, according to Article 38.6. It's not entirely clear to me why - wasn't "greatly-reduced speed" precise enough?

An entire paragraph has been removed from Article 38.8. Cars delayed on leaving the grid may now overtake at any time prior to the pit entry in order to resume their original starting position.

Article 40

Article 40.5, which used to ban slow, erratic and dangerous driving behind the Safety Car, has been re-worded... ...but is still redundant in the face of the new Article 30.3 (and, technically speaking, the International Sporting Code that preceded both). The only difference is that behaviour that "could be deemed" dangerous is banned behind the Safety Car, while at other times only driving that is dangerous is banned.

Article 40.7 has had a couple of clauses reworded with no apparent change to their effects on the racing.

The phrase in Article 40.9 requiring the Safety Car formation to be kept as tight as possible after the Safety Car has left the scene has been deleted. This may be due to the massive pile-up in China.

Article 40.11 continues to have the clause whereby last-lap Safety Cars are not followed by green flags for the last few metres of the race.

The last two paragraphs of Article 40.14 have been modified to account for drivers being allowed to resume their previous positions on formation laps (and condensed into one paragraph in the process).

Article 42

The second paragraph of Article 42.6 has been modified to take into account the new permission to resume previous position on formation laps.

Conclusions

Most of the changes made this year are minor and repeating what already exists in the International Sporting Code. However, some important changes are hidden among them. Wider pit lanes will be nice but the mechanics will be happier with the fact that most of them won't have a single "all-nighter" all year.

Methods of identifying when a release was done should increase pit lane safety. Minimum lap speeds on track through all sessions could get interesting. However, the change I like the most this year is that the horrible homologated survival cell regulation has been thrown away.

Hopefully future years will feature less cosmetic alteration and more of the type of red-tape paring seen with the removal of certain homologated components.

Warning! Long entry alert!

At the end of the last blog entry I did, Bahrain Bother 1 (Background), I asked four quite big questions:

 

How can F1 justify sending its people into a country where there is probable danger over and above the inherent danger of racing at over 200 mph? What ethical responsibilities does the sport have, given that ethical expectations have changed across the world as well as in the Middle East? Politically, what can - or should - F1 do to prevent itself from facing similar problems in future? Oh, and is there anything F1's own psuedopolitical structures can learn from the lessons of the Middle East?

 

So I will now try to tackle each of these in turn, hopefully before the fate of the 2011 Bahrain Grand Prix is decided.

How can F1 justify sending its people into a country where there is probable danger over and above the inherent danger of racing at over 200 mph?

Well, there is always, at least in theory, danger to those who participate in F1 over and beyond the dangers inherent in the sport. I watched the excellent documentary "Graham Hill: Driven" last night, which among other things briefly discussed his death and that of a significant part of his team in an air crash travelling back from a test. Petty crime is a risk everywhere, but particularly highlighted in Brazil, where sporadic robberies involving guns occur and weaponless versions seemingly happen to at least one person in the F1 paddock every year. Even on-track protests are not unheard of, as Germany 2000, Britain 2003 and Spain 2006 demonstrate, and those can kill drivers (alongside anyone in the car's path) if done badly.

However, heading into a country where violent protests are a possibility in the very city the teams are staying is new territory. Unlike the dangers mentioned above, every member of every team is equally at risk Furthermore there is nothing anyone involved in F1 can do to reduce the risks once in the area and following travel advice.

On the other hand, plane crashes could theoretically be avoided by using less risky forms of transport. Petty crime tends to occur less to those who use safer routes, don't look like they have anything worth stealing and hire protection. The best protection against on-track protests has proven to be diligent marshals, these being the reason nobody has died from an on-track protest yet. None of these take the risks to zero, but they all help.

Speaking of travel advice, many countries on Saturday were advising not to travel unless essential. This is a state that renders standard insurance invalid. The FCO (official British travel adviser) is still advising people not to do non-essential travel, though following peaceful words from the Crown Prince and two days without bloodshed, the British embassy has re-opened for restricted service.

The F1 paddock did not sign up to the sport to be put in danger by third parties, so that sort of danger should be minimised as far as reasonably practicable. On Friday, with riotous clashes on the very roundabout many of the teams are due to stay, it was obviously not safe enough to go. Besides, previous revolutions have rarely been resolved in three weeks and uppermost in many people's minds were that three of the countries in the Middle East "protest dominoes" - Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan* have already experienced a revolution (if this is defined by ousting of governments).

However, the two days of peace make the question more difficult. Will this peace last? While some of the protesters are still refusing to come to the table, a danger exists that violence could resume. Having said that, the removal of the army from the equation has had a transformative effect on the situation.

I think, in the absence of more detailed knowledge about Bahrain, I will leave the question of whether the peace will last as an open question. The other part to this question is whether F1 can take that risk. I don't think it can - which the idealistic side of me thinks is a pity, but the pragmatic side believes is part of sensible risk management. Bahrain is in uncharted territory and F1 simply cannot afford the danger of having a lot of its people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What ethical responsibilities does the sport have, given that ethical expectations have changed across the world as well as in the Middle East?

When the FIA was formed, it declared itself apolitical by statute. Hence, all championships it organises are bound by the code of not favouring any form of politics over others. At the time, it was considered completely and utterly normal for a sport to disavow any interest in political matters. Sporting ethics demanded that the only ethical policy of a sport was sportsmanship.

However, since then there has been a growth in the influence of sport on matters outside its strict domain. From the point that commercialism entered sport, it became rich. Riches gave power. While no sport governs any particular state, sport is frequently used as a badge of approval by certain countries. In particular, hosting a World Cup or an Olympics is seen as proof that a country is wealthy, good at organising itself and has a form of politics acceptable to the wider world.

The hosting of a F1 race has always suggested wealth. It can suggest good organisation but doesn't necessarily have to (provided the people doing the actual race organising are skilled at it, the rest of the nation can be as disorganised as it likes). Politics is another matter.

Beyond the concept of sportsmanship (which has become gradually less important to F1 over the years), the fact that the FIA runs the series implies other ethical considerations. This is because the FIA also has a road division. F1 doesn't represent itself any more; it has become the public face of an organisation trying to decrease deaths and injuries in a wider context.

It is not entirely clear what this means for F1 yet. The many who watch F1 without regard for its wider implied political role would consider it heresy for the road safety agenda to play any part in what F1 does or where it goes. Indeed, many people reading this blog will remember the time before F1 and road safety were linked (this being one of Max Mosley's ideas in 1993).

For those in the FIA wishing to avoid interdepartmental hypocrisy, however, it implies that countries which deliberately endanger lives on the roads should be avoided by F1. Going to places where the death toll is high is not a problem because the FIA can work with such places to reduce it. If the government itself is working cross-purposes. So how does this fit into Bahrain? Well, one of the places where there were deaths in the recent protests was at the Pearl Monument in Manama. Which is a roundabout. In other words, a circular road. And if the reports are to be believed, the army - agents of the government - were responsible for at least some of those deaths.

Nonetheless, I would conclude that this should not be sufficient to exclude Bahrain from consideration as a venue. This was an isolated incident involving a situation not generally considered in the FIA's messages concerning road safety. Nobody is suggesting that Bahrain is usually that cavalier about protests, let alone road safety...

So in conclusion, F1 does have some ethical responsibilities, but those are pretty much self-imposed and not particularly relevant to the situation at hand.

Politically, what can - or should - F1 do to prevent itself from facing similar problems in future?

Would it be possible for F1 to persuade politicians to refrain from actions that would make it difficult for it to race in their countries? Would it be wise?

Bernie Ecclestone has repeatedly said that he is in contact with the Crown Prince of Bahrain over the matter of whether F1 is safe to go there. This indicates that, at least for Bahrain, F1 has a channel with which to attempt political influence. It is certain that at some point, Bernie will have mentioned that peace would help reassure the powers-that-be that it might be possible to race at Sakhir after all.

I do not think anyone would argue that this sort of mild influence in an emergency situation is anything other than beneficial. In fact, many people have been asking for peace in Bahrain who have rather less stake in the matter. However, it does open a question of whether this could be done in other, less urgent circumstances.

It would be tricky. The FIA, as previously mentioned, is apolitical. The fact it still is is not a random decision. It enables them to work with any country in the world. This is especially important given that they are, as previously mentioned, involved in road safety work as well as organising motor racing. If a country believes that the FIA might use politics as a reason to proffer or withhold a Grand Prix, then it is far less likely to be receptive to its views on other matters. Even countries that do get a race will be looking over their shoulders because political viewpoints change rapidly, in many of the countries in which the FIA is involved if not within any part of the F1 paddock itself.

Also, what precisely would qualify as sufficient political cause to prevent a F1 race from being issued? Human rights violations have been cited, but every country has human rights violations of one sort or another. Some have more violations and/or different types than others, but every country has skeletons in the closet. Violence has been suggested too, but apart from violence in places the F1 circus will need, how does one separate the various degrees of violence that are considered permissible and those which are not?

So I would conclude that there is little F1 can do politically to protect itself from this sort of situation, even in terms of relatively uncontroversial things like avoiding politically unstable countries (unless of course the instability is of a type likely to prevent the race being run in the first place).

Is there anything F1's own psuedopolitical structures can learn from the lessons of the Middle East?

This final question reverses the focus. Up to now, it's been a question of if F1 should give the world anything from an ethico-political perspective. Now it's whether the world can give anything to F1.

In Bahrain Bother 1, I mentioned Frank Herbert's quote that "the layered society is an invitation to violence". While nobody is suggesting that anyone will ever get into fisticuffs over F1's psuedopolitics, the verbal equivalent is not only possible but has happened on numerous occasions.

The powers-that-be in F1 have many layers. Drivers, teams, officials, the FIA, CVC/Bernie, circuit organisers... ...so many interest groups, so little equality, so much potential for trouble.

It is difficult to use the standard political response to repair the issue. "Democracy" in F1 could never be especially representative because even surveys of F1 supporters have never netted much more than 100,000 total, despite the true number being well into the millions in many countries. Hardly the basis for a representative governance.

As for internal representativeness, there's a surfeit of those. FOTA, GPDA, OWG, MBNP (OK, I made the last one up...**). They don't seem to get to do a huge amount because of the pre-established power structures. Said structures seem to spend half their time getting in each other's way, let alone the way of these upstarts. It would take a wholesale reorganisation to stop this from happening but nobody seems to have the authority, let alone the appetite, to do it by themselves...

F1 can learn from the Middle East that there's an inherent problem with its structure. That said, the different countries there are each coming up with their own solutions to the problem of an inherently unstable layered society and so will F1.

Conclusions

F1 isn't very political, cannot become very political, but sadly cannot justify sending their people to Bahrain yet. It can certainly learn from the Middle East but applying the lessons will be difficult.

* - Jordan the country, I hasten to add, not Jordan the TV pundit...

** - MBNP hypothetically means Massive Bunch of Noisy People.