Bahrain International Circuit

Motorsport track in Bahrain

Bahrain's Desert Circuit at Sakhir

Opened at Sakhir in 2004, Bahrain carried Formula 1 into the Middle East for the first time and later moved its race under the lights.

Keeping a desert off a racing line takes ingenuity, and at Sakhir the answer was glue: the organizers sprayed an adhesive over the sand around the Bahrain International Circuit so the wind could not carry it onto the track. Bahrain's Crown Prince, Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, drove the project forward as a national objective. Hermann Tilke designed it, the cost came to roughly US$150 million, and the complex grew to six separate tracks, including a drag strip and a test oval. The racing surface was made with graywacke stone from a quarry in Shropshire, England, a long way to send gravel and, by the drivers' account, worth it for the grip.

Construction ran so late that the organizers tried to cancel the first race. Bernie Ecclestone declined, and on the 4th of April 2004 the first Formula 1 Grand Prix in the Middle East went ahead on a circuit that was not quite finished. Michael Schumacher won it for Ferrari, and ten years later the first corner took his name. The standard lap is 5.412 km, but the site's other layouts have had their outings. The longer Endurance Circuit was used in 2010 to mark sixty years of the championship, and in 2020 the Outer Circuit staged a second race, the Sakhir Grand Prix, where Sergio Pérez won for the first time.

Civil unrest in the country led to the cancellation of the 2011 race, and Formula 1 came back in 2012. For its tenth year, in 2014, the event became the circuit's first night race, and it has kept evening hours ever since. Bahrain is usually an early round, and it opened the season in 2006, 2010 and every year from 2021 to 2024.

Across 22 championship rounds from 2004 to 2025, Lewis Hamilton has won five, Sebastian Vettel four and Fernando Alonso three, and Oscar Piastri won in 2025. The 2026 race was cancelled because of conflict in the Middle East, leaving the circuit that first brought the sport to the region to wait for its next turn.

Every Grand Prix here

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