Opinion: The dark secrets behind Saudi grand prix

Fast forward a few years and the former champion is now behind a bid by Saudi Arabia to host its first F1 race next year, which it emerged last week has been successful.

Along with another former driver, the Scot David Coulthard, Hill was among guests posing for pictures at the site of a gigantic entertainment and sports complex being built in the middle of the desert, 28 miles from Riyadh.

It’s a surprising move, given Saudi Arabia’s human rights record is way more toxic than that of Bahrain, which in 2012 was being hit by waves of demonstrations during the Arab Spring.

The crackdowns were brutal and continue to this day with death sentences passed following convictions based solely on confessions extracted through torture.

Demonstrators had been planning to use the Bahrain Grand Prix to draw the attention to the repression in their country and at the time Damon Hill feared the protests could end in a bloodbath.

‘Obviously there is a great deal of pain, anger and tension in Bahrain’, he said.

The question, therefore, has to be asked: was Hill solely concerned that demonstrations caused by that ‘pain, anger and tension’ could turn nasty if police opened fire at the Bahrain Grand Prix, or did he also care about why so many were taking to the streets?

His involvement in the Saudi project would suggest the former; that he was more concerned about the motor racing community – of which he was one as a former champion and Sky commentator - being embarrassed that protestors were being shot dead at one of its races, rather than why people were demonstrating in the first place.

So, not‘ the conscience of Formula 1’ - like its savvy public relations manager.

There’s no danger of pro-democracy protestors overshadowing a Grand Prix in Saudi Arabia, of course. They’ve all fled abroad, the most famous being Jamal Khashoggi who was brutally murdered and his body dismembered during a visit to the country’s consulate in Istanbul.

The Saudis had planted spyware on a fellow campaigner’s phone and discovered the former Washington Post journalist was launching a worldwide campaign to push for democracy in the Middle East.

Khashoggi and his ‘busy bees’ founded Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) just a few months before his murder in 2018.

It was around the time the authorities in Saudi Arabia had rounded up a dozen women’s rights activists and thrown them in jail, where many still remain having suffered sexual harassment and torture.

Three years before that the country’s de factor ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, as defence minister, launched a brutal war in Yemen which has left more than 100,000 dead, 12,000 of them civilians and 10 million children facing starvation.

But that does not seem to bother Mr Hill.

Instead he is happy to help Saudi Arabia with its ‘sportswashing’ – a term coined by Amnesty International to describe countries with toxic human rights records who use the glitz and glamour of sports and entertainment to wash away the stain on their reputations.

And it doesn’t get much more glitzy than Qiddiyah – a massive £5.9billion entertainment city being built in desert and which the world’s longest F1 circuit will weave in and out of.

As well cars hurtling under giant aquariums, spectators will be able to watch races from the world’s tallest and fastest rollercoaster, mimicking what’s happening on the track at speeds of up to 155mph.

You can imagine ‘the oohs and the aahs’ from motor racing fans and the back slapping among the Saudi Arabia authorities as they pull of their biggest sportswashing coup since the world heavyweight champion boxer Anthony Joshua defeated Andy Ruiz Jnr for his £66m payday last December.

Ahead of that track being built the inaugural Saudi Grand Prix next year will be a night-time race round the city of Jeddah.

Amnesty International has now given up calling on sportsmen and artists to boycott Saudi Arabia, realising that is unrealistic because the lure of multi-million pound deals is too great.

However, they do call for those who take the Saudi riyal to at least speak out about those women who are behind bars for campaigning for the right to drive or an end to the male guardianship system.

Or the war in Yemen which the UN now calls the biggest humanitarian disaster on earth.

Or the kafala system of sponsored labour – described as modern day slavery - under which thousands of migrant workers from South Asia will toil away to build the Qiddiyah entertainment complex which Damon Hill is endorsing.

Hopefully he will appreciate that ‘obviously there’s a great deal of pain, anger and tension’ caused by Saudi Arabia either to its own people, its neighbours or its workforce.

But will it be enough to make him speak out about the human rights abuses being perpetrated by that regime.

I somehow doubt it. But if he does then, yes, he will be ‘the conscience of Formula 1’.

Anthony Harwood is a former foreign editor of the Daily Mail