Feature: Bahrain Brings F1 Back to Arab World

The first Grand Prix in the Middle East on Sunday is a big step for Formula One, just as it is for Bahrain.

With China also making its debut in September, the sport is broadening its horizons and reaching out to new regions of commercial importance.

For the moment at least, the Gulf kingdom can claim the world's most modern Formula One circuit - a gleaming $150 million oasis shimmering in the desert heat on the site of an old camel farm.

Some of the paint may not be dry, and track workers were still applying it in copious amounts on Thursday, but Sakhir represents a future that some of Europe's older venues will struggle to come to terms with.

"This is a new world, the Middle East," said Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone on Thursday. "That's why I've been trying to get here for a long time, because I could see a lot of things here for industry, our sponsors and manufacturers. It opens a big gate."

However important Sunday's debut in the desert turns out to be for the development of the glamour sport, it will be hard pushed to be as momentous in pure sporting terms as Formula One's only previous foray into the Arab world.

Bahrain, ultra-modern and with the highest of safety standards, is a world away from the Moroccan Grand Prix of 1958 that was held at Casablanca's Mellaha circuit and which Ecclestone also attended.

"Bit different to here," he said standing in Bahrain's palm-fringed paddock. "I mean, the security guys there (in Morocco) were with guns and everything on the side of the track."

First Champion

Morocco was both a heroic and harrowing race.

With Argentina's five times champion Juan Manuel Fangio turning his back on the sport at the French Grand Prix in July, the road was open for his British rival Stirling Moss to assume his mantle.

Britain did indeed hail its first Formula One World Champion in Casablanca, but it was the dashing Mike Hawthorn rather than Moss who came out on top. Moss did everything he could to secure the title, winning the race and also taking a point for the fastest lap, but Ferrari's team tactics won the day.

American Phil Hill moved over in the closing stages to allow his Ferrari teammate to take the second place he needed for the title. While Moss had triumphed in four races, Hawthorn had won just one during the course of a season in which two of his teammates had died.

It was a cruel blow for Moss, who had been runner-up to Fangio for the previous three years.

"I coveted that championship. After Fangio's retirement I felt I was his natural heir. Only his presence had kept it from me the previous three seasons," he said later. "I was really very upset."

Morocco also witnessed a constructors' title awarded for the first time and it went to a British team - Moss's Vanwall. But the moment of glory came at a heavy price.

Vanwall's up-and-coming Briton Stuart Lewis-Evans, the Jenson Button of his era and a friend and contemporary of Ecclestone who acted as his unofficial manager, died after a fiery crash.

Ecclestone, who moved away from Grand Prix racing for a time after Morocco, has long since reshaped the calendar to the point that most of the races have been introduced since he took charge.

But while welcoming Bahrain he still has a soft spot for the traditional venues, despite repeated threats to take Formula One out of its European heartland to new venues where tobacco advertising is sanctioned.

"I was trying to think to myself driving in this morning how many of the races that are on the calendar I did start," he mused on Thursday.

"I'd hate to leave some of the old traditional circuits, Monza or Spa. It would not be nice to leave those. That's why we're back in Nurburgring again. It's an old brand."