Bahrain Grand Prix officially dropped for 2011

2011 Bahrain Grand Prix

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Bahrain International Circuit, 2004

The FIA has confirmed the Bahrain Grand Prix will not take place in 2011.

The World Motor Sport Council voted yesterday to revert to the previous version of the 2011 F1 calendar.

This restores the Indian Grand Prix to its original date of October 30th in place of the Bahrain round.

The WMSC originally voted 12 days ago to give India’s slot to Bahrain. The teams wrote to the FIA objecting to the decision, citing logistical and describing an extension of the calendar to accommodate an Indian round as “unbearable” for their staff.

Here is the updated 2011 F1 calendar.

2011 Bahrain Grand Prix


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    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    57 comments on “Bahrain Grand Prix officially dropped for 2011”

      1. :lol:
        :mrgreen:

      2. :-) :-O :-D

        1. I want to join in! How do I do these smileys? ;)

        2. Bigbadderboom
          16th June 2011, 11:26

          Put to bed at last :)

      3. Anybody still up for the tripoli street circuit?

        1. They better buy some more galoshes because there won’t be an “boots on the ground”

        2. I am rather looking at the options of doing a Damascus – Jeruzalem (alternatively Gaza City) double header.

    1. Good… And at this rate, I can’t see it happening next year either!

      1. HounslowBusGarage
        15th June 2011, 17:55

        Well that’s what I was wondering, too. If it has been dropped because the council think it’s insecure or unsafe or similar, does that mean that they will have to have another (rather more rigourous and objective) suitability inspection before it can be confirmed on the calendar for next year?
        Is Bahrain likely to be the 21st race that’s removed from the 2012 provisional calendar to make Todt’s preferred 20 races?

        1. Its certainly possible that they’d drop it from the calender, but it would have to be for security reasons and unrest amoungst the population that caused it to be dropped back in March. Ofc thats still 9months away and anything can happen between now and then.

          1. It depends, if they cancelled it first time, they’d probably have to cancel it now. If we go back we’ll knows it’s coz they found and crushed them all. sigh.

            We’ll see when it comes round.

    2. MVEilenstein
      15th June 2011, 17:47

      Government thugs hardest hit.

      1. yet they still get the race 3 months later anyway.

    3. FIA have finally had a reality check!

      1. I don’t think so, they were kinda forced into it.

    4. I have noticed how people here were getting really angry for the fact that the Bahranian’s wanted to stage a Grand Prix. I remember those same people were going crazy because Silverstone was nearly dropped. Double Standards anyone???

      1. It was the Prince who wanted to stage it. A lot of his people probably didn’t agree with his decision.

        The Silverstone Grand Prix has a huge following. The Bahrain Grand Prix has not.

      2. Well those incidents were under different circustances, so they’re not great comparisons. I personally wasn’t bothered about Silverstone, or angry about Bahrain.

      3. Silverstone might as well go too

    5. seems strange on TV how the BBC still refer to Bahrain as ‘Round 1’ with ‘(cancelled)’ next to it. Then Australia was ’round 2′.

      1. As far as I’m concerned Australia was round one and Brazil will be round 19 and I’m not bothered what the BBC do:

        https://www.racefans.net/f1-2011-season/2011-f1-calendar/

        1. The official F1 site agrees with your view it would seem:

          http://www.formula1.com/races/calendar.html

    6. The way F1 is being run right now, I half expect this decision to be reversed in a month.

    7. Finally good news…

      Bahrain or as it should be called “Bah-ring” is amongst the worst of Grand Prix venues. The attempt to improve the track by adding more to the lap times with the “inner section” was an insult to not only the teams , drivers but us as fans.
      Still have to blame Senna and the need to design safe tracks that don’t test the cars or the drivers. Time has come to look at all events and remove those who have ruined great corners and driver challenges for the sake of safety. One down, who is next??

      1. That’s not why it was dropped though. The circuit itself is pretty trivial in the overall scheme of things

      2. So Ted, if I’m reading your comment correctly, the high saftey standards in F1 is all Senna’s “fault”.

        I guess you are right, he was the only driver, in the entire history of motor racing, to ever have a serious accident. (My sarcastic tone is clear for all to see I think).

        1. The fallout from Sennas death put fear into many organizers and their events, who until that unfortunate day did infact have a few demanding corners that were a true measure of ones talents. The cause and effect of his death has made the challenge of F1 somewhat easier…

      3. Yeeeah! Lets take the safety back to the gloooorious 50’s!

        … Safety > all.

        1. I get it…short sleeves, hay bales and no seat belts.

    8. It should never have been reinstated to start with.

      The way the Bahrain Grand Prix has been handled over the past month has been a complete mess and has damaged F1’s reputation.

      1. Agreed, and agreed

      2. And so ends FIA’s most costly foot-shooting exercise to date. Maybe next time they send someone to do a ‘field report’ he could be someone from Planet Earth. Can’t be too hard to find, surely, even at FIA…

        1. Could be tough, I think it’s mostly Martians and Venusians.

    9. The question now is whether it will be back in 2012? I hope not, but presumably it will be.

      I don’t have some crazy vendetta against the country- I’ll be happy to see the race return, as soon as they stop mistreating their own people, and start moving towards democracy. But I won’t be holding my breath for that

      1. China & Turkey can go on?

        1. Yawn. Two wrongs still make a right eh

          1. Apparently they always will…

      2. I am with you on that Ned!

    10. :( I was only looking forward to this year because of 20 races

    11. So I wonder what next years calender should be, I quite like a jumble in the racing order so if I was Bernie, I’d have let it gone like this:-

      Australia
      Malaysia
      Korea
      Turkey
      Spain
      Monaco
      Britain
      Canada
      USA
      Europe
      Germany
      Hungary
      Belgium
      Italy
      Singapore
      Bahrain
      Abu Dhabi
      Brazil
      Japan
      China
      India

      Either that or take Bahrain, make it the first race, swap Australia and Malaysia around and leave it there.

    12. I think FOTA pretty much put the nail in the coffin last week.

    13. Gnarly Racing (@)
      15th June 2011, 22:07

      Is the state of emergency back on now?

    14. It would appear that the Bahrain government has not learnt anything from the past few months as they push on with the show trial of 48 surgeons, doctors, paramedics and nurses.

      There’s a great opinion piece in The Independent by Robert Fisk that concludes:

      Bahrain is no longer the kingdom of the Khalifas. It has become a Saudi palatinate, a confederated province of Saudi Arabia, a pocket-size weasel state from which all journalists should in future use the dateline: Manama, Occupied Bahrain.

      Apparently it has so incensed the government of Bahrain that it apparently plans to sue The Independent for its reporting on the crackdown on protests in the country.

      Perhaps they’d be better taking a look at this video on how the Isle of Man police deal with protestors and youth on the streets.

      Don’t hold your breath for a Bahrain F1GP in 2012.

      1. Now that is a perfect display of how to get the masses to react positively to police forces!

        That officer is almost standup comedian there!

    15. Although I agree with the majority of people here in that the race should not have taken place and join in with the applause at the decision… the FIA have forgotten a crucial party in this mess.

      The fans.

      What about those poor people who bought tickets to the Indian GP – booked flights etc and then moved hell and high water to change their plans to the new date, only to have it rescheduled. This entire mess could, and should, have been avoided by just cancelling it altogether, it’s truly atrocious.

    16. Yay I won’t have to completely overhaul my posters! :)

      1. Another good ground to be cheering this has (finally) been decided then.

      2. Yay, I won’t have to re-upload all his posters…

    17. I see the Bahrain gp as just a ‘plaything’ for the crown prince of Bahrain and his mates. It costs so much to host a gp and that money can be put to better use to benefit the people of Bahrain. To me there doesn’t appear to be a passion for F1 out there, the people generally seem to have no interest in their grand prix.

      As

    18. I have never liked the Bahrain gp, its a dull track. To my memory in their 7 races since joining in 2004 have all be pretty much a dull procession. (Please correct me if I am wrong, I cant remember an exciting Bahrain gp) The best bit I remember was Raikkonen’s firey engine failure (although hard for a mclaren fan like me to admit!)and the Ralf Schumacher & Sato tussle at turn 2, both in 2004.

      Fair play to Tilke, he tries, but Bahrain is a rubbish track design, this is F1, we need challenging tracks that produce good and exciting racing. The traditional circuits always produce exciting racing, Spa & Montreal for example.

      I can think of a few circuits that would be better on the calendar.
      If I compare todays F1 calendar, to that of when
      I started watching F1 in the late 80s, it makes me sad because F1 has lost some great tracks and had them replaced with generally boring tracks in places where there is no real tradition of motorsport. I know the new places F1 is going can afford to pay more, but thats another can of worms for me. Heres where I go on a bit..( criticism welcome of my views of what i see as ‘great tracks’)

      Rio has gone, but at least we have Interlagos.
      ‘Old’ & ‘new’ Imola. Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Mexico. Paul Ricard, then Magny Cours, both gone. Old Hockenheim. Jerez, Estoril, Adelaide, Austria A1 ring, old and new… I may even go as far as to say Phoenix and Detroit, as I do like a street circuit!

      Bahrain won’t be missed by me if it doesnt return next year.

    19. Thanks heaven for this.I don’t think it would have been a good move. I hope things calm down & they come back strong next year.

    20. Bahrain Grand Prix officially dropped for 2011 ? — WOW, didn’t see that coming.

    21. Awesome. Hopefully the casual viewer was oblivious to the amount of faffing that went about cancelling it. More importantly let’s hope Bahrain arrives at some sort of peace by the end of the year.

    22. James Williams
      16th June 2011, 13:32

      So many websites reporting this.. stating something we already knew….

      1. Of course it was highly likely that the race was going to be dropped after Bernie Ecclestone said he didn’t think it was going to happen.

        But equally it’s important and newsworthy that the sport’s governing body has stated officially that it isn’t going to happen. After all, Ecclestone has changed his mind before (more on that here).

    Comments are closed.