Bahrain Hopeful Over Rescheduling at LinesMaker

Bahrain Hopeful Over Rescheduling

Eccle­stone says Bahrain could still be added to the 2011 calendar

Bahrain remains hope­ful of resched­ul­ing its post­poned 2011 grand prix despite ongo­ing civil unrest in the country.

Race offi­cials released a state­ment on Sat­ur­day which kept their options open, although it did not com­mit to a date.

Organ­is­ers had been given until 1 May to decide if a race can be staged and F1 supremo Bernie Eccle­stone has hinted the dead­line could be extended.

But a spokesman for gov­ern­ing body the FIA stated: “As far as we’re con­cerned a deci­sion is still due on Sunday.”

The Bahrain Grand Prix had been sched­uled to open the 2011 sea­son on 13 March but was called off in Feb­ru­ary because of anti-government protests.

Bahrain’s Crown Prince made the deci­sion to can­cel the race, with Eccle­stone com­ment­ing at the time that it was the right choice.

The Gulf state is still under mar­tial law after a month of protests which Mid­dle East ana­lysts say have been caused by ten­sions between the rul­ing Sunni minor­ity and Shia majority.

How­ever, Bahrain Inter­na­tional Cir­cuit chair­man Zayed Rashid Alza­yani said in the state­ment that con­di­tions were get­ting better.

“The sit­u­a­tion is evolv­ing all the time; our day-to-day life is grad­u­ally improv­ing under the cur­rent State of National Safety,” he stated.

“We look for­ward to wel­com­ing the teams and dri­vers and every­one involved in For­mula 1 back to Bahrain in the very near future.”

No dates were men­tioned, how­ever, and there was no spe­cific con­fir­ma­tion that the race could be rescheduled.

A cir­cuit spokesman added: “We are not say­ing we are host­ing it, we are not say­ing we are not host­ing it. We are not say­ing it is cancelled.”

Eccle­stone told Reuters that extend­ing the dead­line, which is due to expire on Sun­day, would give organ­is­ers more time to assess the polit­i­cal situation.

“Things can change in a cou­ple of weeks… so you don’t know,” he commented.

“All of a sud­den every­thing might be peace­ful in a month’s time and they are happy to run the event and so we are happy to be there.

“We need to wait a lit­tle bit to see exactly how progress is made. I sup­pose we’d be safe by early June or some­thing like that.”

The sport’s 80-year-old com­mer­cial supremo added that he might have to say “bye-bye Bahrain” but a deci­sion was not imminent.

The FIA told BBC Sport, how­ever, that it is not aware of any plans to extend Bahrain’s deadline.

“As far as we are con­cerned a deci­sion is still due on Sun­day,” an FIA spokesman said.

“Because it’s a week­end it may be Mon­day morn­ing that we announce the deci­sion, but we haven’t spo­ken to Mr Eccle­stone about any delay.

“The deci­sion will be a joint one between the FIA, For­mula One Man­age­ment and the Bahrain authorities.”

If Bahrain is restored to the 2011 cal­en­dar it has been sug­gested it could become the penul­ti­mate race of the season.

Eccle­stone is con­sid­er­ing 20 Novem­ber, the week after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, which could mean the season-ending Brazil­ian Grand Prix is moved back by a week.

The F1 supremo also com­mented on the future of the Turk­ish Grand Prix, say­ing he was hope­ful it would remain on the cal­en­dar despite a local offi­cial com­ment­ing this week that the 2011 event would be the last.

The Istan­bul race has failed to attract large crowds and the gov­ern­ment is baulk­ing at what it says is Ecclestone’s demand for dou­ble the fee next year, under­stood to be around £15.5m.

“Turkey is a good cir­cuit,” said Eccle­stone, who is also the race pro­moter in Turkey. “All the facil­i­ties there are good, every­thing is good except we don’t have a big crowd.

“I would be dis­ap­pointed if we lose it but we can’t keep sub­si­dis­ing it.

“When our first agree­ment was made, they [the gov­ern­ment] sub­sidised ticket rev­enue so every­one was expect­ing a whole bunch of peo­ple to be there and if there wasn’t, the gov­ern­ment was going to make up for the miss­ing tickets.

“It looks very much like the crowd is going to be much big­ger this year, so it means the government’s involve­ment will be con­sid­er­ably less.”

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