First held in 2006, the Desert 400 was only the second V8 Supercar championship event to be held outside Australia and New Zealand, following a single event at the Shanghai International Circuit in China in 2005. The Bahrain event was originally held in November as one of the final rounds in the season's calendar. In 2008, local Bahrain driver Fahad Al Musalam made a guest appearance in the event for Team Kiwi Racing. The 2009 event did not take place, as the scheduled event in November 2009 was postponed to February 2010 in order to link up with the new Yas V8 400 event, held in nearby Abu Dhabi.
In late 2010, V8 Supercars announced the event was to be discontinued for 2011, citing the congested nature of the circuit's early season schedule.[2] V8 Supercar would maintain a presence in the Middle East until 2012, at Abu Dhabi, however the championship no longer features an event in the region.
The series used the Bahrain International Circuit's shorter Paddock layout for the series' first three visits. For the final Desert 400 in 2010, the addition of GP2 Asia to the V8 Supercar weekend led to the event using the full Grand Prix layout for the first time, a layout normally used in the Bahrain Grand Prix.[3]
^Greenhalgh, David; Howard, Graham; Wilson, Stewart (2011). The official history: Australian Touring Car Championship - 50 Years. St Leonards, New South Wales: Chevron Publishing Group. pp. 102–111. ISBN978-0-9805912-2-4.