All in Manama's backyard

Forty-degree heat. Twenty four-wheeled jet engines. Sixty-thousand sandswept spectators. Hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues across hotels, restaurants, merchandise, sponsorship, the list goes on. All in three April days. Short, but most definitely sweet. It's race day and Bahrain is celebrating. And so it should be, the fourth Grand Prix of the F1 calendar is set to generate in excess of US $400 million, or 3% of GDP, for the Gulf's smallest land mass - the island kingdom of Bahrain.

As Martin Whitaker, chief executive of the Bahrain International Circuit says as we try to converse in between the deafening whizz of GP2 cars flying on the track outside his office overlooking the start/finish line, it's not the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the facilities that matters, it's the economic impact.

"Let's face it, this is just a race... what's that, how did that happen?" screams Whitaker as he watches a car smash into a wall on the monitors around us. "It's a great race of course but the value is much more than what you're seeing today. A lot of people say to me ‘have you got back the investment you made into the circuit?' In a way that's why you'll see all the new circuits that are coming on board. Singapore is a classic example.

"But you have to invest hundreds of millions and realistically you won't see it back on the turnstiles, or in sponsorship, but you will see it in terms of global awareness and global profile, and that's what we've seen here many times over in terms of the economic impact it's had on the kingdom and the media value alone. It's put Bahrain on the map."

It most certainly has. With 60,000-plus spectators cramming the stands around the classically designed desert track, you can see why the authorities and Whitaker and his 100-strong team are overjoyed, and why F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone has signed on the dotted line to continue to have a race in Bahrain, as the BIC's chief exec says vaguely, "deep into the next decade".

"We have a gentleman's agreement that we don't discuss the length of the deal, so we came up with the nice catchphrase which means a very long-term deal," he says deliberately slowing down his speech for the last four words. "It gives us a lot of confidence, a platform on which to build."

Even Whitaker admits that before the race Bahrain was almost ignored outside the Gulf, suggesting that the kingdom was more commonly known as a centre for Islamic or offshore banking and "one or two other things". Now, however, he adds "it's known as that but also where one of the best Grand Prix's takes place."

As he rightly states, just three hours before the red lights turn green and 20 cars race breakneck at 300kph-plus into a hazy horizon and a blind corner, "today we are the focal point of the sporting world. There will be no bigger event in the world - all in Manama's backyard."

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