Negotiations over the granting of a grand prix to Bahrain were apparently as tough as a Saudi prince’s hands. The minister for state-sponsored decadence, reclining on a migrant labourer, gave Bernie Ecclestone his final offer. ‘Bernie, light of my eye and song of my heart, can I peel you another grape?”
In the past I have slandered the unbearable soul-destroying misery that is Port Elizabeth; but after the weekend just past, the residents of that blighted hovel by the scum-flecked sea can lift their heads and say that they no longer inhabit the world’s ugliest place. That honour is now reserved for the citizens of Bahrain.
Watching the formula one circus whizz around a giant box of kitty litter with some tar smeared across it, one had to wonder where the £100-million spent on the track’s construction had gone. Palm trees cost about 10 bucks a go, so there’s 50 spent. And the glue needed to keep it all from lifting off and blowing into the Red Sea probably cost about a thousand. I smell books cooking.
The French attempt to ban the wearing of religious apparel by Muslim immigrants has predictably set the chattering classes chattering, but somehow nobody chatters much about Western women in the Middle East being expected to shroud themselves like the ghouls they’re considered. In this climate of one-eyed sartorial fanaticism, it was always going to be tricky for Bernie to line pits with the usual half-naked nymphs, collagen and silicone straining at the seams.
Perhaps it is time the West followed the example of Brazil and declared the bikini an item of holy significance. However, in a magnanimous gesture of international camaraderie, the state allowed women team- members to wear overalls and to make eye contact with their colleagues who weren’t their brother/ father/uncle. But multicultural tolerance only goes so far, leaving the mystery of what exactly it was that was spraying out of the champagne bottles on the podium.
Sparkling grape juice is one possibility, but there’s always the danger of leaving a magnum of the stuff standing in 40ÞC heat and it fermenting into something satanic. Sparkling water is out of the question, since all the water in the Emirates is carefully rationed between the irrigation of golf-courses and ornamental fountains depicting Saddam Hussein pissing on the White House. No, it must have been the only liquid they can spare in Bahrain: petrol. Good thing no-one lit a celebratory cigar.
The addition of this race to the grand prix calendar will reportedly go some way towards patching up relations between the region and the West, which implies that if everyone is rich and fat, nobody feels like blowing up anyone else. And while on the topic of repressive regimes being bribed with lucrative sporting events, China now also has its own grand prix.
Naturally, the concept of competition will have to be explained to the Beijing politburo as they shuffle into the hospitality suite, but they should catch on fairly quickly if analogies are drawn between Ferrari and China on the one hand, and McLaren and Taiwan on the other.
Given the Chinese penchant for over-enthusiastic emulation, known in the West as piracy, motoring enthusiasts will be awaiting the launch of surprisingly affordable Chinese-produced Ferraris at the end of the year, 50cc engines mounted in plastic chassis screaming up the byways of the Orient. Fans can also look forward to owning their own genuine original entirely real racing helmet signed by Mikel Shoomucha himself, made in the factory at Modena, Hong Kong.
Bernie has paid someone to make his bed, and now he must sleep in it. The sport of motor racing has turned the corner into a world of political expediency and global demand, and in a decade Bahrain will seem as tame as Belgium. What thrills await the faithful: dodging Datsuns mounted with machine-guns on the home straight of the Democratic Congolese Grand Prix; drivers fuming in the pits in Nicaragua, waiting for their crews to be ransomed back from religious crack dealers; the late-night two-hour 800km sprint in a straight line through Chechnya, illuminated by mortar bursts.
Will they last? Will the Libyan Grand Prix be a success or will Moammar Gadaffi be visited by an angel in a dream who will tell him to hold all the drivers hostage until he is granted the Soccer World Cup?
It’s go, go, go indeed.