Last weekend, F1 went to Bahrain for the fourth Grand Prix of the season. While the country has been shaken by a conflict between Shiites and Sunnis for over a year, the arrival of Formula 1 was an opportunity for organizers to promote the kingdom’s unity with the slogan “UniF1ed” (United) visible everywhere. During the podium ceremony, a banner was even displayed. Zayed Alzayani, the circuit director, wore a cap featuring the same slogan throughout the weekend.<\/p>\n
This appropriation of Formula 1, and more likely the use of the term F1, is not at all to Bernie Ecclestone’s liking: “We have asked them to remove it and not to use it,” explains the F1’s chief financial officer.<\/p>\n
However, Mister E does not think that it added fuel to the fire: \u00ab There were already problems before they used this slogan. We are not here to tell people how to run their country, \u00bb emphasizes the Englishman.<\/p>\n
Some journalists, however, were not kind regarding the staging of this Grand Prix, particularly the English press, which drew the ire of Ecclestone: \u00ab I saw Bernie getting angry with English journalists in the press room. I had never seen him so upset, \u00bb reports Livio Oricchio from the Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bernie Ecclestone did not have a restful weekend in Bahrain and it seems that he did not completely enjoy the trip…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":41767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1749],"tags":[87,1404],"class_list":["post-19626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1","category-news","tag-bernie-ecclestone","tag-sakhir"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n