Section:GDN 1N PaGe:35 Edition Date:190808 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 7/8/2019 19:31 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
Thursday 8 August 2019 The Guardian •
35Running on empty
Saudi GP not about
F1 healing powers
but cash and cleaning
regime’s reputation
W
as it really only last year that
Formula One’s owner , Liberty
Media, was making its pious
announcement that “grid
girls” would no longer be a
part of its stewardship of this
most woke of all sports? “We
feel this custom does not
resonate with our brand values,” intoned F1’s managing
director of commercial operations back then, “and
clearly is at odds with modern day societal norms.”
But which society? Formula One takes gazillions
to race in so many diff erent types of society. It feels
diffi cult to apply any standard across the board. For
instance, things that might be acceptable in the land
of Silverstone, such as human rights and democracy,
are less acceptable in the land of, say, the Shanghai
International Circuit.
Even so, news that Liberty is in talks to hold an F1 race
in Saudi Arabia adds real moral heft to its self-styled
position as a leading sports progressive. According
to the Times , this could happen as soon as 2021 , with
talks already underway. One source tells the paper a
“signifi cant” number of concessions will be required.
“Formula One wants to showcase as much as possible
that sport is diverse,” runs another quote. “It doesn’t
want to go there and disappear again with no impact.”
Well. There will certainly be an impact if F1 holds a
race in a country where women were allowed to drive
only last year , and where, up until last week , they were
not permitted to travel without formal permission from
a male member of their family, to say nothing of the
imprisonments without trial, mass public beheadings
and so on that characterise life in the kingdom. Or indeedof the devastating intervention in Yemen which has
caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
But it feels a shade more likely that such an impact
would be in the arena of reputation laundering as far
as Saudi Arabia is concerned and not in the fi eld of
diversity, or human rights, or any of the other things we
are obliged to pretend a Formula One race might gift to
a high-paying country. The idea that big-money sport
heralds social change has been so comprehensively
debunked by the evidence of recent mega-events
from Russia to China to Qatar to Azerbaijan that it feels
amazing its proponents have yet to come up with some
other fi g leaf for their money grabbing.S
till, Liberty is on safer ground with its
apparent insistence that any race in
Saudi would have to happen under strict
conditions. Guys, pretty much everything
that happens in the kingdom happens
under strict conditions. That’s kind of
their thing, so this feels like an easy win
for you. I mean, right off the bat I think we
can be confi dent no unsolicited bikini-clad ladies will be
besmirching the good name of Formula One if they race
in Saudi, as Formula E already does. Clearly, bikinis are at
odds with the “societal norms” of Saudi Arabia.
Critical local press is also unlikely to be a problem –
in short, there isn’t any. And internationally there was
the matter of the murder and dismemberment of the
dissident Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi
inside the Saudi embassy in Istanbul less than a year ago.
But I’m sure we know what Formula One’s most
idealistic minds are thinking: can’t a brutal dictatorial
regime grow? Can’t a brutal dictatorial regime change?
This is a question we are constantly being asked to
consider as far as the crown prince, Mohammed Bin
Salman, is concerned, given he has put a good nine
months of clear blue water between now and the whole
murder-and-dismemberment business, which he was
concluded by the CIA to have personally ordered.
As for the shifting “brand values” of Formula One, this
isn’t the fi rst time the prospect of a Saudi race has been
raised. Naturally, it was originally a scheme of the former
F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone, as you’d have expected of a
man whose managerial crushes included Adolf Hitler
and Saddam Hussein. Bernie did manage to get the
Bahrain Grand Prix up and running,
reluctantly suspending it only once
when the state was in the middle of a
brutal crackdown against Arab Spring
protesters.
That the Saudi proposal would be
resurrected under the Liberty regime
felt less predictable but perhaps it
has been playing the long game. To
mark the end of the driving ban last
year, a Saudi woman, Aseel al-Hamad,
drove a lap of the Le Castellet circuit
before the French Grand Prix. “I
believe today is not just celebrating
the new era of women starting to
drive,” she told reporters, “it’s also the birth of women in
motorsport in Saudi Arabia.”
Maybe and yet maybe not. For all the guff talked about
the healing power of Formula One, the chief benefi ciaries
of a Saudi Grand Prix would obviously be the Saudi
regime and Formula One’s coff ers. And, at another level,
governments such as our own.
These things always suit the British governments of
the day, who really prefer people’s attention diverted
to a scandal other than their continued insistence on
selling arms to Saudi Arabia, despite knowing exactly
what they are used for. It’s a useful distraction. Yes , a lot
of politicians will be much happier fi elding questions
over whether British drivers should boycott a potential
Saudi race than questions over why their administration
continues to enable arguably the most gruesome regime
on earth. All told the Saudi Grand Prix feels quite the
inevitability in the not-to-distant future, when it will be
absolutely in line with the “brand values” of the UK to
concede the foreign policy brief to Lewis Hamilton.Marina Hyde
F1’s most
idealistic
minds are
thinking:
can’t a
brutal
regime
grow, can’t
it change?▲ A Formula E race in
Saudi Arabia, where
F1 – as a self-styled
leading sports
progressive – wants to
stage a grand prix
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