Australian racing driver Daniel Ricciardo, he of the beaming smile and boyish energy, is one of my favourite Formula 1 (F1) drivers after Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. He’s like a happy golden retriever in a helmet, head stuck out of the car window as the world whizzes by.
For some reason, which I choose to ignore, Ricciardo’s orange McLaren car, helmet and racing overalls have the word "Splunk" plastered all over them. This is what I have taken to calling him, in a homage to Great Australian Nicknames of the Past. Splunk.
Hamilton is in every way more dignified, sophisticated and cool than Splunk. His black Mercedes has Kingspan emblazoned on its nose cone. Splunk and the King. It sounds like a morality tale, and in a way it is.
Kingspan is a new Mercedes sponsor. It’s also the company that made some of the insulation used on the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower in London, which caught fire in 2017, killing 72 people.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, survivors of the disaster are calling for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team, and Hamilton in particular, to drop the sponsorship deal. Mercedes has said no.
According to The Guardian, "in 2020, the public inquiry into the disaster disclosed e-mails from a Kingspan technical manager, after he was questioned by potential customers about the fire safety of the boards, in which he said the customer ‘can go fuck themselves, and if they are not careful we’ll sue the arse [off] them’".
That’s some SA medical-aid level customer service right there.
In a delicious coincidence, the Kingspan sponsorship started at the first ever Saudi Arabian F1 race last weekend.
There have been a fair number of questions asked about that relationship too. Under crown prince Mohammed bin Salman — he of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi fame — Saudi Arabia is going through the worst period of repression in its modern history.
Do I need to relate the litany of human rights abuses, from the arbitrary detention and torture of political dissidents, women’s and human rights activists, to murdering journalists?
Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at international NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), doesn’t think so. "Given the unprecedented coverage of Saudi Arabia’s terrible rights record over the past few years, no performer or international sporting body can claim they didn’t know," he says.
Enter, stage right and at blinding speed, Daniel Ricciardo.
"I mean, I don’t watch the news. People say that’s a bit ignorant, but I choose not to watch it, because, let’s say, a lot of the time people like drama, they like negativity. I don’t watch the news, and feel better about my day," he said in an interview.
"I try and understand a little the situation of places we go, but … it’s not in my nature to understand a lot about this.
"When I arrived … I mean, I know some people said it’s a little, maybe, interesting why we come here and that. But I know when I arrived … maybe out of the first five people that came up and saw me, and said hello, and took a photo, two of them said, like, it is my dream that F1 comes here. And they were so happy and excited. And … on the track ride, I was trying to ride, and they all had to stop me all the time to get a photo and they … really seem happy and passionate to have it here.
"So, you know, it’s like anywhere we go, if we bring some joy to a nation, to a place, to a city, then that at the very least is positive. So if we can have this effect, then that’s a good outcome."
The Splunkmeister will be gratified to know that Saudi authorities share his aversion to news and reading. They, too, want us to just feel better about our day.
Take the example of the scholar Hassan al-Maliki, who faces a potential death sentence for peacefully expressing his thoughts on Islamic history. According to HRW, charges that have been brought against him include possessing books that were not authorised by the competent authority, as well as publishing books.
(As an aside, the example of Ricciardo, above, is why people always use clichéd Nazi Germany comparisons when trying to explain current atrocities. If you’re trying to reach the minds of people who don’t read the news, and think history is remembering who won the last race, you need to mine the crassest metaphors of popular culture. Unfortunately, you’re much more likely to get through if you’re using the tropes of Hollywood war films than an example that requires general knowledge.)
All the cars in the Saudi grand prix carried some form of tribute to the recently deceased Frank Williams. The Williams cars themselves had Sir Frank’s favourite quote printed on their cockpit halos: "I feel the need, the need for speed."
A man who worked with some of the greatest drivers of all time over decades, and his favourite motivational quote is by Tom Cruise as Maverick, a fictional person in a crappy American movie. That’s what we’re dealing with here.
Indeed, as Splunk points out, it is "a little, maybe, interesting" why F1 would choose to race in Saudi Arabia.
You’ll have heard of "greenwashing", a term coined in the 1980s to describe how the hotel industry’s "save your towel" campaign was just a way to use guests’ guilt about the environment to cut down on laundry bills, rather than make any discernible difference to water usage.
What F1 is doing is "speedwashing" — taking money to help the Saudis blur a clear view of the country’s dreadful human rights abuses.
The thread running through all the softball questions that the F1 commenting team gently lobs at the drivers was how happy Saudis were at being able to watch racing.
Splunk’s take on this sums it up. "So, you know, it’s like anywhere we go, if we bring some joy to a nation, to a place, to a city, then that at the very least is positive. So if we can have this effect, then that’s a good outcome."
I guess that’s what made Hamilton’s helmet such a panacea for torture, those jolly sparkly bits.
Driver Sebastian Vettel’s contribution was to host a women-only (well, and Seb) go-karting event. He is quoted on motorsport.com: "There are a lot of questions that have been asked and I have asked myself, so I was thinking of what I can do. There has been so much attention on negative examples when it comes to shortcomings of certain countries in regards to maybe human rights and other things, so I really tried to think of the positives.
"I set up my own karting event … under the hashtag #raceforwomen, and I think a group of seven or eight girls and women were on the track."
Yay! Seven or eight girls and women got to have fun! Now that’s how you topple a regime.
As The Guardian notes: "Saudi Arabia has made much play of recently allowing women the right to drive. However, HRW has called on F1 to intervene on behalf of women who helped to achieve the change. Prominent activists were released last year after nearly three years in prison for peacefully protesting for their right to drive. They remain under suspended sentences, banned from travel and prohibited from pursuing their human rights work or speaking out about their detention."
These are all examples of how F1 managed to give the illusion that the sport was asking the hard questions, without ever having to answer any of them.
Are you taking money to speedwash Saudi Arabia? "Stop focusing on the negative all the time! Look at the happy smiles on the faces of the fans!"
The whole exercise is to enable us to enjoy our racing while harbouring the illusion that we’re bringing something positive to the situation.
If LGBTQ+ people watching the race can feel a glimmer of solidarity when they enjoy the sight of Hamilton’s rainbow helmet cocking a sparkly snook at the Saudi elite in the paddock, then surely it’s OK to take the Saudi money and legitimise their disregard for human rights?
We should stress that this is not just an F1 problem; it’s a sport problem. Take the example of the UK’s Newcastle football club, recently purchased by a Saudi-backed consortium, whose fans now happily wear tea towels on their heads as impromptu kafiyas, and wave the Saudi flag as they walk to the game. Or the strange, on the face of it, spectacle of Israel playing in European football competitions.
Speaking of Israel. Are the same South Africans who were condemning Miss SA for going to Israel as vehemently condemning Hamilton? Not as far as I can see, which does rather raise the question of whether you consider something to be anti-human rights only insofar as it doesn’t disturb your own hero worship. It’s a lot easier attacking a beauty queen with no record of solidarity than someone who is a hero. Albeit a hero who has made a difference where it’s expedient, but doesn’t appear to want to make a sacrifice where it isn’t.