Mohammed Ben Sulayem wants you to believe that the FIA acts as a protective bubble. When the president of world motorsport's governing body steps up to microphones and insists that Formula One drivers and teams will never be put at risk over Middle East events, he is doing his job. His job is public relations defense for an organization that pockets hundreds of millions of dollars in promotion fees from nations looking to buy international legitimacy through horsepower.
The lazy consensus in sports journalism is simple: accept these assurances at face value, nod along with the talking points about safety protocols, and pretend that a high-speed circus operates in a vacuum completely detached from regional conflict.
That perspective is naive. It ignores how modern sports promotion actually works.
I have spent years watching corporate boards and sanctioning bodies treat safety as a compliance checklist rather than an absolute guarantee. When missiles land within sight of a practice track, as they did during the 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the reaction from leadership is not immediate evacuation. It is a marathon meeting behind closed doors where team principals are pressured by commercial rights holders to keep the show on the road.
Let us be entirely precise about what safety means in this context. It does not mean zero risk. It means acceptable economic risk.
The Economics of Sportswashing
To understand why races in volatile regions are never truly cancelled until the situation becomes completely untenable, you have to follow the money. Liberty Media is a publicly traded American media conglomerate. Their primary obligation is to shareholder value, not geopolitical stability.
Middle Eastern Grands Prix—whether in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or Abu Dhabi—are multi-year, nine-figure financial anchors for the sport. If a promoter pays a host fee upwards of fifty million dollars per year, pulling the plug requires an existential trigger. A localized threat, a distant plume of smoke, or civil unrest outside the paddock gates does not clear that high financial bar.
When Ben Sulayem claims drivers will not be put at risk, he is redefining the word risk. To the FIA, risk means a structural mechanical failure or inadequate medical extraction times on the asphalt. Geopolitical volatility, civil rights abuses, and regional proxy wars are filed under external affairs, neatly separated from the sporting jurisdiction.
This creates a perverse incentive structure. The drivers become the ultimate corporate shields. Their global fame and athletic brilliance act as human armor for events that would otherwise face intense diplomatic scrutiny.
The Driver Dilemma and Performative Protest
Look at how the paddock responds when questions of regional ethics and safety arise. Drivers are handed media training scripts. They are told to stick to racing. When individual competitors attempt to use their platforms—such as Lewis Hamilton speaking out on human rights records—they are met with polite institutional indifference or direct warnings from the governing body about keeping politics out of sport.
Then, regulations are quietly rewritten to ban unauthorized political statements on the grid.
Imagine a scenario where a major security incident forces a grid-wide boycott by the drivers themselves. The contractual penalties would be catastrophic. Teams would face lawsuits from commercial partners, breach of contract claims from television networks, and massive financial liabilities. The drivers know this. The FIA knows this.
This is why the relationship between the governing body and the competitors is inherently adversarial, disguised as a partnership. The FIA needs the drivers to strap into the cockpit because an empty grid destroys the product. But they need them quiet, compliant, and willing to absorb the reputational friction of racing in authoritarian states.
Dismantling the Neutrality Myth
The standard defense offered by motorsport executives is that sports can bridge cultural divides and bring positive change to developing regions. This is a comforting fairy tale.
There is zero empirical evidence that hosting a Formula One race improves human rights conditions or de-escalates regional tensions. If anything, it provides an international megaphone for regimes to whitewash their global image over a three-day weekend.
When Ben Sulayem insists that safety is paramount, he is masking a deeper reality: commercial imperatives consistently override ethical boundaries. If safety were truly the absolute priority, major events would not be contracted in regions experiencing active, volatile geopolitical conflicts or severe civil crackdowns where the rule of law is dictated by royal decree.
Stop asking whether the trackside perimeter is secure. That is the wrong question entirely. The real question is why multi-national entertainment corporations pretend that sport and politics do not mix while cashing checks from governments that weaponize sport for geopolitical validation.
Next time you watch a glowing sunset race over a desert circuit, remember what is actually keeping those cars on the track. It is not the FIA rulebook. It is a calculated bet that the financial cost of leaving always outweighs the human cost of staying.
Turn off the broadcast commentary and look at the balance sheets. That is where the race is actually won.
