The sport Shanghai'd

Sir, I was watching the pre-race show from Shanghai on ‘steerage TV’, as the BBC is now known in F1 circles, when I saw Bernie Ecclestone interviewed about the coming Bahrain race.

I was staggered to hear his assertions that Bahrain was “a safe place” and that all the “trouble was over”. Bernie’s logic seemed to run along the lines that as the protestors were not actually protesting about F1 then holding the race was entirely justifiable. Interesting view, I thought. Presumably the same argument could be made for a Syrian GP later on in the year? After all, wretched though the situation is for the poor Syrian people, I am not aware that they have ever expressed any negative opinions toward the sport.

As an avid F1 viewer since the early days of Grand Prix on a Sunday evening I am proud to say that this was one race I sat out. I believe that Mr Ecclestone’s sordid and greedy outlook on the world has now truly taken the sport to new depths of hypocrisy.

Sam Lever Lillingstone Lovell, Buckingham