After today's Grand Prix Formula One's journos will have to get used to writing merely about racing again as some of the reports on the turmoil in Bahrain in recent days have felt more like they came from war correspondents.

Meanwhile, Pitpass' business editor Christian Sylt was doing what he does best and scooped up news about the biggest business story in F1 so far this year - the mooted stock market flotation of the sport. This has been under discussion for the past month with some media outlets talking as if it is a done deal. It is far from that as Sylt reveals in the Mail today.

There are two pieces of crucial news about the float which are revealed in his report. The first is that the board of F1 has to vote in favour of the float in order for it to proceed and, secondly, the piece reveals that the board has not yet given this approval. That does not mean that the float won't happen but just that it has not got the green light.

In addition to being Pitpass' business editor Sylt is also a co-owner of F1's industry monitor Formula Money which works with many F1 sponsors, circuits, prospective races and teams. It carried out research for the advisers of F1's majority owner, CVC, when it was planning its acquisition of F1's rights holder and supplies consultancy services to Red Bull, the Malaysian Grand Prix, the US Grand Prix and the planned South African Grand Prix.

It gives Sylt contacts across the worlds of F1 and finance and his news about the float has been corroborated by two senior sources in these fields. They have confirmed that CVC, is working towards an IPO in June but this could be delayed until October or even shelved depending on market conditions and getting the necessary approval from the board.

It is understood that the decision to float will be put to the board of Delta Topco, F1's parent company, next month and one of the sources says that "CVC is aiming to be ready by June." He adds that "when everything is ready, the prospectus is done and the analysts are briefed, the board will be asked and told that they are about to cross over the watershed line."

In preparation for this, Goldman Sachs and UBS have been hired as the lead banks and as the deadline for applications from junior banks was 13 April. It was a process which the source describes as "a feeding frenzy as it is the hottest ticket for banks which couldn't do Facebook."

It has been widely reported that F1 will be floating in Singapore and Sylt himself was the first journalist who talked about this possibility. As Pitpass reported in November last year, F1's boss Bernie Ecclestone told him that "it would be better to float the company in Singapore than sell it." However, what has been widely overlooked by the media since then was Ecclestone's other comment that "if I wanted to dispose of the company today I would float it in Singapore or Hong Kong." Sylt says that investment banks in Hong Kong are still actively analysing F1 suggesting that the location of the flotation has not yet been decided.

The reason that CVC wants to float in either Hong Kong or Singapore is that F1 will become a flagship for the stock exchange there rather than being just another in a long line of big name brands if it was listed in Europe. This means that the exchange would throw more promotional support behind the F1 stock and the source says "listing in the east is another way of getting the brand out there."