Bahrain Grand Prix 2012: 'no Formula One over our blood' cry protesters ahead of weekend's race She was with her uncle, a politician in Bahrain's main opposition party, Al Wefaq, who have called for seven consecutive days of protest to capitalise on the presence of Formula One in the region. Our guides told us about some of the other faces in the crowd; a nurse, Rola Alsaffar, who was allegedly beaten by police last spring for helping to treat injured protesters; a doctor, Huda Alawi, whose husband is a prominent lawyer representing hundreds of protesters currently in jail. With the grand prix coming up this weekend, they said, many activists had been rounded up in the past few days. One of our chaperones, a 19-year-old student, had slept in three different houses over the past three nights after the police had come looking for him. In Al Dair, the police did not intervene and everyone headed off at the end of the march to answer the call for evening prayer. One man, who did not want to be named, was wearing a red Ferrari polo shirt. "I love F1," he admitted. But not over our blood. They are forcing it on us. They will kill us and make it seem like it is nothing. I had heard much the same thing from my taxi driver after landing in Bahrain on Tuesday morning. On our way into town - which, as we were assured it would be by Bahrain's authorities, was completely quiet - he spoke about his feelings regarding Sunday's race. "I have two emotions," he said. One is that I am proud to have such a big event in Bahrain. But the other part of me feels shame. You will be welcome because you are guests in our country but you will be racing over blood this weekend. Asked if the race was not good for the economy, he insisted that the average Bahraini would see little of the $400-500million which the Bahrain Grand Prix organisers estimate the race generates indirectly. "The government and their supporters own all these hotels and buildings," he said, sweeping his hand in a wide arc to indicate the smart hotels and buildings of the diplomatic quarter. The man in the Ferrari shirt asked us to come back to his house for supper but we declined, heading instead to Diraz, another village to the west of Manama where a group of 100 or so youths had organised a protest march. This time it ended in explosions and tear gas. Bahrain's authorities have been at pains to reassure Formula One that safety will not be an issue. And given the enormous security presence en route to the circuit, it is unlikely to be, even given the "Three Days of Rage." A large protest, the largest of the week, is planned on Friday but no one really expects the protesters to be able to get through what amounts to a ring of steel. But that has not entirely dispelled the feelings of unease within Formula One's 1,500-strong travelling army, who arrive in greater numbers by the day. The FIA, the sport's governing body, and Bernie Ecclestone insist the race has nothing to do with politics. But the countless posters around town bearing the slogan "UniF1ed" would suggest otherwise. Human rights groups such as Amnesty Inernational suggest the reforms promised by Bahrain's rulers in the wake of last autumn's damning independent report are cosmetic. Our 19-year-old guide was decisively of the same opinion. "There is still torture, still discrimination, still corruption," he told us. Everything we fought for on Feb 14 last year. It's still just the same.