The weekend of October 3-4 will see the Bahrain Grand Prix held not in the Gulf country, or even anywhere near it but at the Sepang International Circuit south of Kuala Lumpur. It is 3,750 miles south-east of Bahrain and last hosted the Malaysian Grand Prix in 2017, a race won by Max Verstappen.

Formula 1 has officially abandoned hopes of staging the Bahrain Grand Prix later this season, but the decision goes far beyond simply removing one race from the calendar. It is the first major consequence of an increasingly complex security assessment that could yet have enormous sporting and financial implications for the championship.