Former FIA president Max Mosley has savaged the decision to reinstate the Bahrain GP onto the 2011 calendar, saying that the sport was now "complicit" in the actions of the government to quell political protests in the country.
Mosley made the comments in a column for the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper, after the FIA decided to reinstate the Bahrain race onto the 2011 schedule.The decision taken on Friday will see Bahrain slot back in to the schedule on October 30th, with the Indian Grand Prix dropping to December 11th in order to make space for the Sakhir event.
Bahrain's return to the calendar has been met by fierce criticsm from human rights groups, after the government stamped out the political protests which had caused the race to be postponed in the first place.
Mosley admitted that there was an issue of double-standards in criticising the sport over the Bahrain issue despite other sporting events taking place in countries where human rights may be an issue.
"To apply the highest standards of human rights you would have to exclude a very large number of countries from international sport, including at least one close ally of the United Kingdom," he admitted in the column.
He added: "If you were to apply anything less than the highest standards, you would be faced with endless debate about where to draw the line."
But despite this, he added that Bahrain was clearly an exceptional case, saying that the sport was now "complicit" with the government's actions, and saying that the Bahrain race would "cost Formula One dear".
"Surely the line has to be drawn when a sporting event is not mere entertainment in a less-than-perfect country, but is being used by an oppressive regime to camouflage its actions," Mosley argued in the column.
"If a sport accepts this role, it becomes a tool of government. If Formula 1 allows itself to be used in this way in Bahrain, it will share the regime's guilt as surely as if it went out and helped brutalise unarmed protesters."
He added: "Having carried out these horrific acts, the Bahrain government wants to clean up its image.
"That's where the grand prix comes in. By running the race they hope to show the world the troubles were just a small, temporary difficulty and everything is now back to normal.
"By agreeing to race there, Formula 1 becomes complicit in what has happened. It becomes one of the Bahrain government's instruments of repression.
"The decision to hold the race is a mistake which will not be forgotten and, if not reversed, will eventually cost Formula 1 dear."
Meanwhile, Mosley's former F1 partner Bernie Ecclestone suggested that the race could still be dropped again, if the political situation took a turn for the worse.
"The FIA sent people out there to check on the situation, they came back and reported everything is fine," he told the media regarding the decision to reinstate the race.
"It's obvious that everybody feels they need to be safe."
But he added: "In the end we'll have to wait and see what happens in Bahrain. If there is peace and no problems then I suppose the teams will be all right."
He also defended the decision to move the season finale back into mid-December, a move that has been met with criticism from the teams over the extra workload now being placed on their staff.
"Of course they'd rather not be racing in December, but these are unusual circumstances," Ecclestone shrugged.
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