Bernie Ecclestone has a dream. He wants to take Formula One to the world, particularly those bits of the world that have ready cash. Iffy democracy? History of torture? Merely a little rumble strip in the road for Ecclestone, who runs a sport that exists in a Matrix-like world – F1 is simulated reality.

As petrol bombs and teargas explode and flow around Manama, the capital of Bahrain, and as the city prepares itself for the anniversary of Bloody Thursday today, Ecclestone says the April 22 Grand Prix will go ahead. “I expected there was going to be a big uprising today, with the anniversary. But I think what happened, apparently, was that here were a lot of kids having a go at the police. I don’t think it’s anything serious at all,” said Ecclestone, who perhaps thought the vicious and deadly pre-dawn raid of Pearl Roundabout in Manama last year was merely the police having a little bit of fun with the kids. What jolly japes they must have been, Bernie – four people killed, 600 arrested and 70 missing. “It doesn’t change our position in any shape or form. If the people in Bahrain (the government) say, ‘Look Bernie, it wouldn’t be good for you to come over here,’ then I would think again. That is what they said last year.”

The apartheid South African government never asked Eccelstone nor the Formula One Association (FIA) not to stage a Grand Prix in this country when they were brutally oppressing the majority of the people of the land. When accused of racism in 2008 after Lewis Hamilton was abused during testing in Spain, Eccestone said: “People should remember I was the one who pulled F1 out of South Africa because of apartheid, so no one can say I am against black people.”

That’s not entirely true, according to his biographer Terry Lovell, who wrote that Ecclestone continued to stage the South African GP for eight years from 1978 to 1985 and ignored “the political flak”. The French government put pressure on Renault to pull out of the 1985 GP, while several television stations said they would not broadcast the race. Eccelstone thought with his wallet, and the South African GP was cancelled. He feared “FOCA (the Formula One Constructors’ Association) would have been sued by the promoters, Southern Suns Hotels”.
James Hunt, the 1976 world champion turned television commentator, had “very strong views on apartheid”, recalled fellow commentator Murray Walker, and “launched into a withering attack on the evils of the system and the South African government. Quite apart from the fact that this didn’t seem to be very relevant to the South African Grand Prix, it was politically provocative stuff for the BBC to be putting out in a sports programme and Mark [Wilkin, the producer] rapidly passed him a note which read, “TALK ABOUT THE RACE!”

Eccelstone would like nothing more than to just talk about the race. It would be remiss of any of us, particularly South Africans, if we were to do just that.