FIA and fascist sympathizer Eccelstone should part ways to restore Moral Integrity to Sport

Bernie Ecclestone may have to bow to public opinion and call off this month’s grand prix

Bahrain shines uncomfortable light on F1’s moral credentials
11 April, 2012 – Guardian

Dictatorial, undemocratic, feudal in structure and intolerant of dissenting opinion – there have always been fundamental concerns surrounding Formula One. Bahrain has got problems, too.

The Bahrain International Circuit is one of 20 venues for F1’s travelling and very noisy circus in 2012. There are worries about a number of the other countries included in the sport’s calendar as well.

Human rights in China, the home of this Sunday’s race in Shanghai, has long been a topic of heated debate, as have conditions in oil-rich Abu Dhabi, which will host the 18th event in November.

Then there is the next race in Texas two weeks later, the state with the worst record on capital punishment in the United States, while the areas that stage the Indian and South Korean races are infamous for their poverty and have attracted allegations of corruption.

Formula One can argue rather convincingly it is not the planet’s moral guardian. The Bahrain Grand Prix, however, is different. For this is the race that galvanised public opinion last year and it is doing so again. Forget the decibel-fest in Shanghai on Sunday, it is Bahrain the following week that everyone is talking about.

This race was cancelled last year and, unless there has been a fundamental improvement in the political situation, it seems likely that it will be called off again, albeit for safety rather than moral reasons.

But no one is openly talking about it. That is because those who govern the sport want to go to Bahrain with a sense of unity. Without that the whole enterprise is hopeless.

And even now teams are afraid of falling out with the FIA, the sport’s governing body, or Bernie Ecclestone, the commercial rights holder who will be 82 this year but who still holds the sport in his gnarled grip. It has been that way for almost four decades. Ecclestone may be out of date but he remains, even in old age, one of the most remarkable negotiators in all sport and there is probably not a single team in the paddock which is not indebted to him, both personally and collectively.

In recent years some team principals have muttered, privately, that it is time to move on. They concede that while Ecclestone did a great job is positioning the sport where it is now, through the 1980s and 1990s, he knows little of the modern world or perhaps how best to market the beast that he created. …more