Here at the sports desk located somewhere below decks of the Good Pirate Ship RedState, our taste in auto racing leans heavily toward the NASCAR and IndyCar side of things. Not to slight F1, but it’s long been overly snobbish and high roller hoidy-toidy for our taste. If NASCAR is auto racing’s Lynyrd Skynyrd, F1 is its Dave Matthews Band. You get the idea.

Anyway, in its worldwide chase to wherever the most money is, this coming Sunday finds F1 in the auto racing hotspot that is the city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The raging debates around every Bedouin campfire at night regarding Ferrari vs. Mercedes are fierce. But I digress.

Mirth aside, cold reality struck the race Friday, March 25th when a missile struck an oil refinery ten miles from the track. Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the attack, to which the Saudis have responded in like kind. For some unfathomable reason, this has made the race participants a tad nervous.

The race organizers have assured all concerned parties that they are perfectly safe because … um, terrorists never attack civilians. No, really.

“Who are [the Houthis] targeting? They are targeting the infrastructure, the economic infrastructure, not the civilians and of course not at the track.

“We checked the facts from them and we have the assurance from high level that this is a secure place, the whole thing will be secure and let’s go on racing.

“For sure all the families are here. We are only looking forward but with an assurance that nothing is going to happen.”

If that’s not the stuff of warm snugglies, I don’t know what is. *sarcasm off*

There had been talk of the drivers boycotting the race, but the aforementioned comforting words staved off any such notion. Well, to a point. In Saturday’s qualifying sessions, seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton’s car boycotted running fast, while Mick Schumacher, son of legendary F1 driver Michael Schumacher, decided to skip racing the hard way with a hard crash that ended with him being airlifted to a nearby hospital. Reports are that he will be okay, which is a relief to everyone.

And so the race will go on as scheduled. It’s worth noting that Hamilton is no fan of racing in Saudi Arabia anyway due to its penchant for executing people, and that plus security concerns have led him along with other drivers to (ahem) “suggest” they’d like to have a little chat with F1 about any future races in the country. Something tells me all parties involved would be perfectly happy with F1 dropping Saudi Arabia from the schedule and replacing it with the rumored 2023 Las Vegas race. Odd though it may sound, it might be a more fun place to hang out for the weekend than Jeddah.