Sport and politics shouldn't mix – but sometimes they must.

The Bahrain Question - why F1 must take a stand

Shanghai International Circuit, fifty miles south of Shanghai. Its collection of soaring towers and vast stadium complex provide an impressive backdrop to the world's premier motorsport competition. For a few hours on Sunday, as Nico Rosberg's silver Mercedes lapped effortlessly to a long-overdue first victory, all appeared serene in the world of Formula One. But throughout the weekend off-track politics have cast a shadow over the sport's competitive side.

The Chinese circuit is among F1's most impressive venues, testament to the incredible wealth poured into the sport by emerging economies in recent years. But despite China's questionable human rights record, it is Bahrain, another economy whose riches have swelled the F1 coffers, which is attracting all the headlines. The Bahrain Grand Prix is due to run this weekend and despite the kingdom being gripped by mass uprising and demonstration against the totalitarian regime, the race is still going ahead.

Bahrain, particularly the capital Manama, has been in lockdown at various points for well over a year. Since the Arab Spring in early 2011 thousands of mostly Shi'ite protesters have taken to the streets, bidding for freedom and an end to the hereditary monarchy of the Sunni elite, the Al-Khalifa royal family.

Whilst last years' event was cancelled on safety grounds, this year organisers are pressing ahead as though all is normal. This is not the case. The regime has kept dissidents from taking control with violence and shocking reprisals. Stun grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition have been used against protesters. At some points the authorities even resorted to the army's tanks and overseas mercenaries. Political opponents, such as Abdulkarim Ali Ahmed Fakhrawl, a newspaper editor, have been brutally tortured.

Naturally the FIA, F1's governing body, have wheeled out the predictable line that the sport and politics should not mix. But mix the two is exactly what the race's promoters have done. The promotional tagline “uniF1ed – a nation in celebration” paints a criminally distorted picture of the real situation, effectively using Formula 1 as a propaganda tool to wash over the discord.

In reality, the exact opposite is true.

Far from a unifying force, F1 has become a symbol of the oppression of the ruling class in Bahrain. Its benefits – colossal advertising revenues and contributions to the local economy – are mostly confined to the elite section of society which subjugates the rest. In effect, Formula One's presence is allowing the existing regime to solidify its position with the enormous financial windfall it provides.

It is hardly surprising that F1 – and its self-styled 'ringmaster', Bernie Ecclestone – have polarised the protesters' anger in recent weeks. Protesters have burned pictures of Ecclestone and banners and graffiti have all appeared carrying messages with a similar rallying call: “No Formula One over our blood”.

Disappointingly it seems that money speaks louder than morals. For Ecclestone and Formula One's parent company CVC Bahrain is an enormous cash-cow, bringing in £40 million in promotor's fees alone.

Formula One has the opportunity to strike a blow for the freedom of a repressed people. Calling off the race would make the position of a cruel regime even more untenable. Bahrain is a small nation of 1.6 million people and Formula One contributes significantly to its economy every year. Comparisons with other sporting events in other controversial regimes, such as the former Soviet Union, or present day China, are null and void. Jimmy Carter's decision to prevent U.S athletes from competing in the 1980 Olympics in the then-U.S.S.R. made negligible impact on the overall Soviet regime because in the event the politics played little part in the running of the event. Protests surrounding Beijing 2008 again had little effect.

The Bahraini government is using F1 as a PR mechanism, attempting to divert international eyes away from its contemptible treatment of its people. Meanwhile the FIA and F1 itself is playing a dangerous game of brinksmanship in the name of profit, tacitly supporting a brutal regime by holding the race. But, with the violence set to continue, will this short term profit cause long term damage to the sport?  

Magic Alonso, abject Massa and Ferrari's Sepang dilemma.

“Look there! Massa in the gravel! Massa in the gravel! There he is, the Brazilian’s terrible weekend continues,” piped out Antonio Lobato, lead commentator for antena3, Spain’s new F1 broadcaster.

But it was the other Ferrari beached in the gravel.

For several seconds there was a pause of near disbelief as the realisation dawned on Lobato and co-commentator Marc Gene: the red, yellow and blue helmet inside the car belonged to Fernando Alonso.

“El Nano” or “Magic” Alonso, two of Lobato’s favourite epithets for the Ferrari driver, bely Alonso’s near-mythical status in Spain.

His elementary driving error at turn one, where his Ferrari speared off track after he clipped the grass under braking, rendered the commentators speechless. Only Karthikeyan landing his woeful HRT on pole would have provoked more of a shock.

But error or no error, Ferrari are in turmoil. Their new F2012 is less prancing horse, more wounded thoroughbred. Its underlying flaws, already evident from testing, were if anything more pronounced in Melbourne.

Throughout free practice both drivers grappled with unpredictable handling. The mix of entry understeer followed by exit oversteer and lairy slides as the cars struggled for traction, may have produced spectacular slow-mo, but the car’s deficiencies were plain to see, particularly in the hands of Massa, who finished with a hapless spin at turn 9.

On Sunday Alonso atoned for his qualifying misdemeanour, driving a dogged race to fifth and restoring some pride to the Scuderia. But the result owed more to circumstance and Alonso's talent.

Benefiting from a slice of luck at the start as he jinked inside the carnage at turn one, he extracted every ounce of performance from the recalcitrant car. To the delight of the Spanish commentators, his race pace was consistent and respectable, though hardly nibbling at the heels of the McLarens or Red Bulls.

It could have been much worse. Melbourne, largely bereft of high-speed directional changes, places a premium on braking and mechanical grip, helping to mask the Ferrari's aerodynamic flaws.

The high-speed sweepers of Sepang next weekend could reveal the extent of Ferrari's problem far more clearly. A driver can only transcend the car to a certain point – even for someone of Alonso's calibre if the basic aerodynamic grip is missing on an aero-focused circuit it's impossible to be truly competitive, at least in the dry.

If Ferrari will struggle in Sepang, one wonders how Felipe Massa will cope.

In Australia Massa looked out of his depth in an F1 car and unable to remotely challenge his teammate all weekend. He was still over second away from Alonso’s Q2 time, even after the spin. In the race, whilst Alonso was holding off Pastor Maldonado’s faster Williams for fifth, Massa was languishing outside of the points, at one stage battling Petrov’s Caterham and lapping, fuel-corrected, at least half a second slower than his team-mate most laps.

What has happened to the Massa that took the fight to Kimi Raikkonen three years ago?

Massa has never been the same driver since his accident. Did he lose a few tenths after his horrific injury? Is being the team's clear number two an insurmountable mental hammerblow? It's impossible to know. But more Melbourne-style performances and the impressive Sergio Perez will doubtless be lining up to take his place.

Lobato and Gene may have mistaken Alonso's beached Ferrari for Massa's. But given the pair's current form, it was utterly understandable. 

More questions than answers? Conclusions from Free Practice at Albert Park

For anyone expecting the season’s first F1 practice session to leave us much the wiser of the current form book, they were sorely disappointed. 

Melbourne’s typical bright autumnal sunshine was replaced by a selection of cloud and intermittent rain, hardly optimum conditions for F1 cars to stretch their legs and push the limits of performance.

None of the teams showed its real hand today. 

Mercedes and Michael Schumacher topped the timesheets, with the German 7-time world champion proclaiming himself happy with his runs. 

Red Bull looked muted – from the onboard footage Vettel was clearly leaving performance to spare. 

From its body language the car was not squirming around on the limit of adhesion even on the low grip of a moist track. Through the final turn, the fast right-hander where drivers deftly

feed in the power as the corner opens out, there was no hint of him ‘chasing’ the throttle or correcting rear-end slide.

Why should he? It wasn’t worth the risk. The cost of slamming the car into the wall, as Karun Chandhok did last year, would have far outweighed any benefit the team could have gained – the use of any data collected from running on a damp track is dubious at best.

Many other teams followed a similarly low-risk procedure. McLaren looked strong and clearly had performance to spare, whilst Force India underlined their solid testing pace with confident-looking laps from both di Resta and Hulkenberg. 

Their car looked planted and the drivers seemed comfortable from the off, a positive sign for Sunday, where in a race which so often produces surprise results predictability is valuable.

Ferrari's radical pull-rod derived F12 looked a handful in the hands of both Alonso and Massa, the Spaniard suffering several mid-corner wobbles whilst the Brazilian ham-fistedly beaching the car into the gravel after a careless spin at turn 9. 

The car looked visibly less planted than the McLaren or Red Bull, or even the Mercedes. 

Much paddock talk has been devoted to the Mercedes' new wing-stalling DRS enhancer but until its effectiveness can be measured more empirically it's difficult to quantify how valuable it is in reducing lap time.

HRT and its principal Luis Perez Sala looked sheepish after sessions to forget. Not only was the car slow, but unreliable – Narain Karthikeyan stopped on track in free practice 1 and De La Rosa completed a single installation lap. Karthikeyan eventually lapped 13 seconds slower than Schumacher. 

There should be more to come from the team – one hopes Karthikeyan was erring on the side of caution – but for many paddock insiders it will be a long shot if the team even qualifies. Apparently more personnel from Sky are present at Albert Park than from the entire HRT team, which says something about priorities. 

It's premature to ring a team's death knell after two inconclusive sessions but HRT could become a Mastercard-Lola type fracas (the short-lived 1997 team that arrived in Australia 13 seconds off the pace). But with the experience of Pedro de la Rosa the team should begin to make strides. They will certainly need to.

Lotus and 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen were also muted, the Finn complaining of a lack of power steering feel similar to the one that blighted his testing at Jerez.

The problem seems to have been partially resolved as Raikkonen set competitive laptimes, finishing in ninth ahead of teammate Grosjean, but whether Lotus can completely quell these gremlins before qualifying remains to be seen. 

Actions speak louder than words if the famously reticent 'iceman' Raikkonen drove himself straight back to the sharp end after a two year absence, he would generate serious column inches.  

All in all, it was a frustrating session that produced little to upset the general hierarchy generated by testing. The old guard of Red Bull and McLaren seem well-placed and Mercedes appear to be in the hunt. But there remains little to suggest that one team is significantly ahead of any others. 

If dry, qualifying tomorrow will shine a revealing light on the true pecking order for the first time. Until then it's anyone's guess. 

Raikkonen is back – why F1 fans should rejoice

September 2000. A crisp morning at the serpentine Mugello circuit in Northern Italy. A quiet 20-year old Finn steps into a Sauber F1 car for the first time. His icy stare betrays his aching determination to impress on his debut. This is testing - F1´s unglamorous side. Cars pounding around the same tarmac, lap after lap, the drivers honing the car’s set-up and gathering data for their teams´ engineers in their quest to shave off that crucial fraction of a second. It’s a long way from the glitz of Monaco or the high-speed thrill of Silverstone; but here more than anywhere, championships are won or lost.

At this stage the young Finn is merely a blip on the F1 radar. Young drivers come and go. All eyes are on Michael Schumacher’s resplendent Ferrari. F1 cognoscenti are cudgelling their brains to unearth the secrets of the red car's prodigious speed. Little do they know that Schumacher´s future replacement has just entered the fray.

Fast forward eleven and a half years. Testing is under way for the 2012 season and the same driver again steps into the unknown. But this time to a deafening fanfare of acclaim and speculation. After a two-year absence, Kimi Raikkonen is back with the new Lotus team, and much has changed: new tyres, new aerodynamic regulations, a refuelling ban. Even for the world’s fastest sport the last two years have produced a rapid transformation, but some things never change – Raikkonen’s phlegmatic demeanour for one. His reaction to his first day back in testing where he was immediately fastest is typically deadpan: “Yeah the car feels pretty OK. I'm happy”. Dubbed ‘iceman’ in his first F1 career for his silent, implacable coolness, there is little hint of a thaw.

The buzz surrounding his return is even louder than when he was first announced as a full-time driver early in 2001. Barely 21, he arrived with the shortest CV on four wheels – having completed just 23 car races. Two years before he had been racing go-karts. Almost to a man, the FIA, F1´s governing body, professed shock and outrage. Max Mosley demanded that Raikkonen be stripped of his Superlicence – F1´s equivalent of a work permit – until he could prove himself. Drivers, journalists and team bosses poured scorn on Sauber´s decision. Raikkonen was making the unprecedented leap from the junior formulae to the pinnacle, skipping Formula 3 and Formula 3000, the traditional proving grounds for future F1 stars. Only a few, Schumacher among them, voiced their support.

Raikkonen arrived in Australia, the first race of the 2001 season, under a cloud – or rather an unwelcome glare - of controversy. Racing under appeal, it seemed that one false move would land him without a drive. But the doubts quickly evaporated. A fine sixth place on debut, followed by a near-podium in Brazil, then two 4th places in a car most expected to be scrapping for minor points. By mid-season Ferrari and McLaren were jostling to secure Raikkonen´s services for 2002.

Refusing to be pigeonholed as Schumacher’s number two at Ferrari, Raikkonen chose McLaren, replacing compatriot Mika Hakkinen. He quickly outclassed his team-mates, routinely humbling first David Coulthard then Juan-Pablo Montoya. In a two-year-old chassis – a relic in F1 terms – Raikkonen ran Schumacher to within two points of the 2003 title. The 2004 McLaren was well off the pace of the German´s all-conquering Ferrari but Raikkonen still managed to wrestle it to two pole positions and a victory. But it was his brilliant 2005 season that marked him as a great. Despite finishing runner-up thanks to repeated mechanical failures, Raikkonen drove spectacularly throughout. His performance in Japan, gouging out a victory despite starting 17^th on the grid after passing Giancarlo Fisichella for the lead on the final lap, or in Monaco where he qualified half a second ahead of the field, remain imprinted on the minds of all who watched them.

With their 7-time World Champion Schumacher heading for retirement, Ferrari signed Raikkonen as his replacement for 2007. He did not disappoint, winning his first title after a dramatic late season comeback where he overhauled the sparring McLaren duo of Alonso and Hamilton. It was his relentlessness that impressed the most. His Lazarus-like performance at Fuji, where in monsoon conditions he battled back to third after tyre problems had forced him down to 20^th and last, kept him in the title fight. In the final race the tables were turned in an ironic twist; Raikkonen sealed the championship courtesy of a mechanical glitch on Hamilton's McLaren. The fragility of the car which had denied him the title two years earlier had this time worked in his favour.

With his first Championship under his belt, Raikkonen’s stock was soaring but the following year he mysteriously went off the boil. Although faster than teammate Massa in the races, his qualifying performances were sub-par, leaving him a mountain to climb in the race. The first half of 2009 was similarly disappointing, and whispers of him being replaced were growing louder. But in the second half of the season he looked a different driver, achieving a string of podium placings including a fine win at Spa in Belgium: near-superhuman performances given the Ferrari's lack of grip compared to the front runners – the engineers were mystified at the speed he extracted from it. The Raikkonen of old – able to transcend deficiencies in a car and wrestle out a competitive lap time – was back.

But for Ferrari it was too little too late. They signed Fernando Alonso for 2010, backed by an enormous sponsorship deal with Santander and bought out Raikkonen's contract a year early so the Finn headed to World Rally. It seemed he had called time on his F1 career.

It was a shock then, to see the Finn sign up for 2012. Few believed he would ever return. He was fairly competitive in World Rally – even managing a stage victory against drivers who had raced there all their lives. But he is a remarkably adaptable driver with almost superhuman talent. Noone else has ever won a rally stage and an F1 race. He returned to F1 testing this year and was instantly quickest, despite a two-year break and no experience of the new Pirelli tyres. Testing is not racing, and the variations in fuel loads as cars try out different set-ups often mask performance. But Raikkonen's swashbuckling performance shows he is on the pace and looking to prove a point. Last year, Lotus (né Renault) scarcely troubled the scorers. But with a hungry, motivated Raikkonen at the wheel, they could be this year's surprise package.