Formula One Fever

Today is the third and final day of the Bahrain Gulf Air Grand Prix.  The event is huge here and officially started on Friday, continued on Saturday, and will finish today, Sunday.  It is Formula One racing.  For those who don’t know, Formula One is the “funny-looking race car” racing.  It’s the kind, when you got one as a Matchbox car as a kid, and you said, “What’s this funny looking car?” your parents said, “It’s a race car.”  It’s the kind that looks like somebody squished it.  But I like them.  I think they look cool and very fast.

So all this week Bahrain prepared for this event.  The hotels and restaurants raised their prices.  Normally a hotel room is around 40BD for a night ($106.40USD), but for this event they charged 200BD ($532.00USD).  Ouch!  That’s a lot of money for one night.  It’s called “price gouging” or “charging what the market will bear” or “supply and demand” depending on who’s doing the talking.  It is clear that Bahrain understands capitalism very well.

The government was hoping to cash in on the money coming into the island as well.  It was reported in the Gulf Daily News, an English-language daily newspaper, that “Big-hitters in charge of assets worth more than $1 trillion” would be at the event.  It went on to say that, “Bahrain is hoping to convince them to invest some of that cash in the country, said Economic Board chief executive Shaikh Mohammed bin Isa Al Khalifa.”  We’ll see if Bahrain managed to draw any new investors.

The drivers started arriving the week before the race started too.  They were met at the airport by dignitaries and given VIP treatment.  Their pictures were in the Gulf Daily News.  I was going to name them here, but there’s too many.  They all arrived Wednesday and Thursday and then participated in meet and greet sessions, dinners in their honor, and other typical VIP “wining and dining” events.

Fans started arriving Thursday.  And there are a lot of them!  It’s estimated that 100,000 people are attending the races.  It seems that most of those people arrived via the Saudi Causeway from other Gulf countries like Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia.  That means they all brought their cars.  And that means they were driving on our streets.  And that means that traffic, which is usually crazy, was downright insane.  They even came into Juffair.  Juffair is a part of the city that sits on a peninsula, so it is kind of separate from it too.  It is where I live.  And it is a fair ways from “the action.”  But there were a lot more people in Juffair Friday than usual.  I guess they came looking for restaurants that weren’t outrageously expensive.  American Alley or the Juffair Strip, a section of street which has a lot of fast food restaurants, was busier than usual too.  It is usually very difficult to drive on that street owing to its normal high level of traffic, lack of parking (so people park on the street), and narrowness (so there’s no room to park on the street without blocking traffic).  Friday, when I attempted to navigate that street, it was insane!  I was driving so slow I could have walked faster.  Literally!  Even though there were a few traffic jams I managed to get through without hitting anything or anyone hitting me.

By the way, in case anyone cares, it was reported that George Lucas would be at the Grand Prix.  And, before anyone asks, no, I haven’t seen him.  But he did get his picture in the Gulf Daily News.

There’s all kinds of other events associated with the race.  There’s a lot of parties, both private and for the public.  There’s concerts and performers–like jugglers and stilt walkers on tall bicycles.  Race attendees will also get a chance to drive a Formula One car at a simulator.  Some schools and three universities–Bahrain University, the University College of Bahrain, and Gulf University–are giving their students Sunday off so they can attend the race.  The newspaper said that Bahrain University was expecting a lot of students to attend the race anyway.  Other schools will still have class but will let out early.

The Bahrain International Circuit is expecting tickets to sell out.  The Grand Prix in 2007 was sold out, and they are expecting the same thing this time.  By the end of Thursday, 90% of the tickets had been sold.  In case you were wondering I did not go to any events.  I did not want to deal with all the crowds and all the expensive prices that the various thieves vendors would be charging.  I’m not that into racing anyway.  I just mentioned it here because it’s such a huge event here.  Most of this information has come from the newspaper.

Maybe tomorrow or the next day I’ll be able to post information on the results of the race.  I’ll get that from the newspaper too.  Of course anyone who wants to beat me to it could probably look it up online.

Happy racing!