Formula One must decide on Friday whether to satisfy Bahrain's rulers and reschedule the country's postponed grand prix or side with the teams and human rights campaigners to keep it off the calendar.
While many in Formula One have been reluctant to speak out about the situation, Britain's 1996 world champion Damon Hill said the sport had a chance to "show that it cares about all people and their human rights.
"If Formula One agrees to race in Bahrain it will forever have the blight of association with repressive methods to achieve order," he said in a message of support to an online petition.
"The right thing to do, in my view, is to not race in Bahrain until these doubts have been removed."
The outcome of the FIA's world motor sport council meeting in Barcelona is far from clear-cut, however.
Commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone has said he hopes the race, originally scheduled as the March 13 season-opener but postponed due to bloody unrest, will happen. Local organisers say they are ready.
Ecclestone, 80, and Bahrain's Sheikh Abdulla bin Isa al-Khalifa who heads the FIA's karting commission, are both on what promises to be a difficult meeting of the 26-man motor sport council headed by president Jean Todt.
The biggest sticking point could be the calendar itself, rather than the risk of triggering outrage at the idea of racing in a country that has only just lifted emergency law after stifling bloody pro-democracy protests.
It could also prove a useful face-saving device.
To accommodate Bahrain, it has been suggested that the inaugural Indian Grand Prix be moved from its October 30 slot to December 11 - the latest finish to a season since 1963 and a date too far for hard-pressed teams.
"It is getting too much," Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn told reporters at the Monaco Grand Prix last weekend.
"Our guys have been working since January...and we are asking them to work into December and that means there is no time for a holiday before Christmas and that would mean getting straight back in to it in January.
"So personally I think it is unacceptable and we've told Bernie that and he knows our opinion."
The season is currently due to end in Brazil on November 27.
McLaren, who have Bahrain holding company Mumtalakat as their biggest shareholder, and Ferrari have made clear that they have no objection to racing in Bahrain but are also against extending the season.
Several paddock veterans suggested to Reuters that the teams' opposition to the calendar extension could give Ecclestone and Todt the excuse needed to avoid offending the Bahrainis while keeping the race off until 2012, when it would again be the season-opener.
It would also remove the immediate risk of the race becoming a target for protestors and spare the sport's image a battering, but others fear that the voting could still be close.
"I fear that they will try to reinstate it," said one source who did not want to be identified due to the political sensitivity of the subject.
"But I think that given we are mid-season, the world motor sport council will narrowly reject it on grounds that there is insufficient time to change the calendar."
Ecclestone said in February when the race was postponed that he had waived rights fees, estimated at around $40 million, and he will not want to jeopardise that relationship with some of the sport's richest backers.
He has said repeatedly that Formula One, which has never been overly squeamish about which countries it visits, is not involved in religion or politics and "we don't make decisions based on those things."
The paddock source said Bahrain's ruling Khalifa family were major backers of F1 and the sport would not want to be seen slapping them in the face.
"But if the calendar comes out tomorrow and Bahrain is reinstated, there will be an almighty outcry," he added.
That is already building up. Campaigning organisation Avaaz targeted champions Red Bull and other teams on Facebook and Twitter, urging them to withdraw. More than 62,000 people had signed by Thursday afternoon.
"Nobody knows which way it is going to go," said another Formula One source of the meeting that also includes Force India's billionaire owner Vijay Mallya.
"The teams have coded their language carefully and if they (the council) need a reason (not to reinstate the race), it's been handed to them on a plate."
Reuters
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