A cunt with a bad merkin.

From the Patronise F1 website:

Five talking points from the Bahrain GP
Or not-so unified, as the case may be.

1) A good race doesn't mean F1 should be proud of itself.

Bernie Ecclestone, the FIA and the Bahrain authorities may well be congratulating themselves for the ends justifying the means over the course of what proved to be an ugly weekend for motorsport at the Sakhir circuit. The thrilling race we were treated to means that many of the final headlines generated by Formula One's trip to the troubled Gulf kingdom may well be positive ones, from the sporting side at least.

But while the race itself was another sensational affair in this bizarre and complicated start to the 2012 season, and the on-track action passed peacefully and calmly throughout the three days of the meeting, that shouldn't mean that F1's trip to Bahrain deserves to be remembered as a success. Quite the opposite, in fact. This was a weekend where the sport did little more than disgrace itself in front of the critical world's media, and one that the whole of F1 should really think long and hard about even in the aftermath of a largely successful race.

From the uncomfortable combination of Bernie Ecclestone and Jean Todt conducting interviews reminiscent of Comical Ali during the early stages of the weekend regarding the clearly unhappy situation in Bahrain, through to the ugly reports of team members from both Sauber and Force India getting caught up in the ongoing protests and rioting in Manama, through to the petulant and childish airbrushing of the Findia team out of Saturday's action by the TV director, apparently a petty bit of revenge for the team's decision to acquiese to the safety concerns of their mechanics and allow them an early finish on Friday, this was a weekend in which F1 did little to deviate from its reputation as a morality-free zone.

Of the teams themselves, only Mercedes boss Ross Brawn offered anything other than a Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan-esque "I don't like it, but I'll have to go along with it" response when asked about the rights and wrongs of F1's venture into the troubled country. "I think we are here now, and after this event we need to sit down and discuss it," he told Autosport, "We are committed to this race, we are having a race, and after the race with proper judgement of what happened and what we saw, we need to come to a conclusion." The chances of F1 actually having a serious debate about morality seems to be a long shot, but if a weekend dodging petrol bombs and fighting for headlines with reports of dead protesters has done anything, it may at least have forced F1 to develop some sort of self-awareness for the future.

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Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening, no doubt, no awakening.

F1 took till 1986 to pull out of South Africa.

The IOC only adopted a declaration against "apartheid in sport" in 1988 so F1 weren't the only guilty bastards.

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

I didn't know that. I assumed that had come soon after the boycotts.

The pressure got ratcheted up about that time.
Remember Zola Budd in 1984? and the 1986 Commonwealth Games boycott by some African and Caribbean nations in protest at the All Blacks tour of South Africa in 1985.
Also Artists United Against Apartheid released Sun City in December '85 increased the profile of the anti-apartheid movement outside sport.

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...