"Gulf F1 investment fuels debate over states’ growing influence", 18 Nov 2022

Qatar will next year rejoin a race calendar already bookended by Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. And some of the sport’s biggest sponsors now hail from a region that helped F1 increase its “primary” revenues by more than $300mn to $1.5bn in the first nine months of 2022 year on year. Among them is Saudi state oil group Aramco...

Seven-time F1 champion Hamilton has repeatedly raised concerns about human rights in the region, too — including at the inaugural Jeddah GP in 2021, when he said he did not “feel comfortable” racing in Saudi Arabia...

Although human rights activists often accuse the Gulf states of sportswashing their human rights abuses, there is arguably less noise around F1 than around football and golf — and the region’s wider appetite for motorsport is not a recent trend...