Poll: Saudi Arabia Grand Prix 2022, Jeddah - Race 2

Rate the 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix out of ten

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Hmm, how close does the war have to get?

Anyway, shouldn't be up to team principals or drivers, the governing body should be capable of taking a clear position and responsibility.

Personally, upon reflection they shouldn't be racing there.
 
MM-Seat said:
A lot of reports that the drivers have been told if they don’t race the government will make it hard for them to leave.
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That's insane. F1 should blacklist Saudi for future seasons if that is true.

A lot of people are describing the Houthis as terrorists, but that doesn't seem to be true. They're an insurgent government, running a substantial part of Yemen, fighting a civil war against the prior government which is backed by a coalition with Saudi as the most active partner. This matters because it effects what their targets are: look through the reports of what they've target and they're almost all oil infrastructure, military targets, or airports. With one exception, where they hit a school, they've not being going after "terror" targets. I think it's unlikely they'll attack the race.

I'm not sure that's really the point though. The drivers shouldn't be put in this kind of position.
 
Yeah I doubt they’ll bomb the race as that’s hardly a good way to get people supporting your cause! But if they’re bombing places 10km from the track there isn’t much margin for a mistake!

Seem to remember WWE having ‘problems’ getting out of Saudi a few years ago so they’ve pulled similar stunts before if they fall out with you.

Suspect we’ll hear more about this as soon as they’ve all left Saudi soil!
 
What a shambles. Safety of the drivers and all the supporting staff that goes in to the F1 circus muat be paramount.

The message F1 could send by walking away this close to the race would be powerful.
 
The GDPA statement is interesting in tone:

Yesterday was a difficult day for Formula 1 and a stressful day for us Formula 1 drivers. Perhaps it is hard to comprehend if you have never driven an F1 car on this fast and challenging Jeddah track, but on seeing the smoke from the incident it was difficult to remain a fully focused race driver and erase natural human concerns.

Consequently we went into long discussions between ourselves, with our team principals, and with the most senior people who run our sport. A large variety of opinions were shared and debated and, having listened not only to the Formula 1 powers but also to the Saudi government ministers who explained how security measures were being elevated to the maximum, the outcome was a resolution that we would practice and qualify today and race tomorrow.

We therefore hope that the 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix will be remembered as a good race rather than for the incident that took place yesterday.​

(via The Race)

And, in other reasons this is a bad track: Cem Bölükbaşı is in hospital with a concussion following his incident in practice. Yes, I know there can - and have - been accidents at any track but this one seems particularly dangerous.
 
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EVH said:
What a shambles. Safety of the drivers and all the supporting staff that goes in to the F1 circus muat be paramount.

The message F1 could send by walking away this close to the race would be powerful.
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100% agree.

I meant the could all have a secret meeting, and force a red flag, after red flag, after red flag, and just make the race a total farce. Or have the cars break down, and have to pit them to 'save' the engine
 
I think this is a great track (something I wasn't sure about last year before the race). The regime is something else and probably should never have gone there in the first place. I don't see a highly targeted attack on infrastructure well away from the track is an issue any more than a pub bombing in Barking should stop a tennis match in Wimbledon.
 
It makes for difficult messaging, the saudis want to portray the attackers as being terrorists but also want to reassure people that they aren't going after the race track. What I would like to see out of the FIA is some context. Like they say they want to keep going to places like this to shine a light on them. So do it. Point out why this attack happened and who the various groups are. They have a huge number of eyes pointed at them right now. So they could actually use that to maybe help the world understand a little bit more.
 
BuffetSlayer said:
Of course Horner wants to race. He doesn’t want another race weekend culminating in nil points!
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He is such a sleaze ball. Of course he wants to race because points lost and gives Mercedes that extra race to try and catch up. If the shoe was on the other foot he would have been campaigning for the lives of everyone. Race shouldn't go ahead full stop.
 
adam cool dude said:
He is such a sleaze ball. Of course he wants to race because points lost and gives Mercedes that extra race to try and catch up. If the shoe was on the other foot he would have been campaigning for the lives of everyone. Race shouldn't go ahead full stop.
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All of the team principles unanimously agreed to race (after the first meeting and the second). Wolff and Brown said the same to the waiting reporters - Horner was just the first to be quoted after the team principles left the second meeting.

Looking at FlightRadar24, there is a distinct lack of planes queuing up to land at the airport. A couple on final approach and another couple approaching and a couple which recently took off, but there are no more in the vicinity approaching by the looks of it.

I wonder if they're going to close the airspace while F2, FP3 and qualifying take place.

What a mad sentence to write.
 
"Good Afternoon everyone. And now thanks to hundreds of dedicated personal on site and back in the UK we're going to bring you... [F2]".

Weird way to start the build up to F2 sprint race.



this_is_gav said:
I wonder if they're going to close the airspace while F2, FP3 and qualifying take place.
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That looks like a false alarm. F2 are on their warm-up lap and the airport is busier than before.
 
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