Formula 1 has finally confirmed the calendar of the last seven races in this 2021 championship. The space left vacant so far for round 20, scheduled to take place on 21 November, has now been occupied by Qatar. The country, which in 2022 will also host the football world championship, will then become a permanent part of the Formula 1 program starting from 2023 and for the next 10 years. Certainly the effort of F1 must be underlined and praised: in times of pandemic the F1 management has managed to set up a calendar of 22 races (a record) that will take the teams to a total of 19 different countries. However, just like it happened after the confirmation of a GP in Saudi Arabia, the announcement of a race in Qatar also made several organizations that deal with human and civil rights raise their voices.
The accusation against F1 is that of ‘selling themselves’ – mainly for economic reasons – to race in non-democratic countries and where the main freedoms are limited, thus providing a ‘media platform’ for these states to clean up their image in front of the rest of the world. Following the announcement of the Losail race, user u / Otto910 published an interested graph on Reddit that we report here and which highlights how in recent years the sport has increasingly moved towards countries considered non-democratic. The Democracy Index is an assessment provided by The Economist weekly which examines the state of democracy in 167 countries. By calculating the average figure of this index for the countries that are part of the Formula 1 calendar, it turns out that from 2005 to 2021 it has dropped by 1.2 points.
15 years ago, the average democracy index of the countries involved in the sport was 7.41. A value that would have placed F1 in 41st place among the 167 countries measured. Now, however, in the ranking of the various countries, Formula 1 would be 68th, with an average index of 6.16. A fact that could make Stefano Domenicali and all the top sports leaders reflect in the future.
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