F1 News
Date: 20/April/2012
Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) and then Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) set the pace during Friday's pair of practice sessions for the Bahrain Grand Prix, as off-track issues continue to overshadow the event.
Last year’s Bahrain round was cancelled due to anti-government protests, which are still ongoing. As a result, F1 has received a huge amount of criticism for its willingness to return, while the Bahraini government insists the event can help provide ‘unity’.
The risk of F1 personnel being directly targeted by protesters seems slim, but team members from Force India and Sauber have already witnessed violent clashes between protesters and police while travelling from the circuit.
Two members of the Force India team have subsequently left Bahrain and the team then withdrew from this afternoon’s second practice session. It seemed the team wanted to get back to its hotel before nightfall and even a personal visit from Bernie Ecclestone couldn’t persuade them to stay.
However the official explanation cited “Logistical reasons… which will result in the team missing second practice to ensure the most competitive performance in FP3, qualifying and the race.”
When facing the press, deputy team principal Bob Fernley struggled to provide a clear explanation.
“On Wednesday evening there was a very unfortunate incident for members of Force India, and there is no question, it de-stabilised the emotional element of our team,” he began.
“Yesterday evening we put a programme together which addressed all the issues from the team, we sat down with them all, and that meant a slight re-structuring of the programme in order that we could make sure that there was comfort within the team and that we delivered a very strong qualifying and race programme.
“It’s not a slight at all on the event, it’s just about an internal structure of Force India.”
The politics surrounded this weekend’s event unsurprisingly dominated the team principals’ press conference on Friday, much to their obvious frustration.
“The calendar has been set for some time, we are the competitors, it’s a race in the calendar, we are here to race. Period,” said McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh.
Teams insist they have no say in the hosting of events, although a grey area has emerged in that teams do have so form of input when the racing calendar is over 17 rounds. The 2012 season consists of 20 events.
Whitmarsh insisted this ‘input’ was not related to deciding on individual races.
“In theory we [have an input] but as you know, the commercial rights holder… he has to get the races into the calendar and typically we’re not consulted individually on each race.”
Ecclestone and the Bahraini officials insist the issue of protest is being blown out of proportion by the media. Most drivers are refusing to comment on anything other than the track action.
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