It was a relationship destined for riches: Formula One and its owner, Bernie Eccleston were looking for new race locations to re-energise the sport, the capital city of the UAE was looking for prestigious new events that could be held in the remodelled metropolis.
The project to develop Yas Island was first announced in November 2006 and the total value of development is somewhere in the region of $40 billion. On 3rd February 2007, in front of an elated crowd of thousands, Formula One Management announced that Abu Dhabi had secured the rights to host a Formula One Grand Prix from 2009 – and it would be held on the Yas Island development.
Yas Island is the very latest and greatest in Formula One development. And it ought to be; it’s paying about $35 million a year for the race, almost twice the European tariff.
Measuring 25km square and separated from the mainland by a narrow channel of water, the island is about 10 minutes drive from the Abu Dhabi airport, about 30 minutes from the central business district and about one hour from the Jebel Ali end of Dubai.
The first phase of development has been completed to coincide with the inaugural Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix and includes seven hotels with 2,000 rooms and purpose-built yacht marina.
Phase two includes the Ferrari World theme park, a Warner Brothers theme park, three golf courses (including a Kyle Phillips-designed links course), an equestrian centre and four polo fields, shopping malls, a water park – and even more hotels.
The road to Abu Dhabi
The Formula One circus arrives in Abu Dhabi with the championship decided – Englishman Jenson Button’s battling fifth place in the penultimate race, the Brazilian Grand Prix, means he is uncatchable in the drivers’ championship and Brawn has an unassailable lead over the other constructors – but there’s no shortage of interest in the Abu Dhabi GP.
Some key issues:
Who will be second in the championship? Two points separate Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull, one of the surprises of the season, and Button’s Brawn teammate Rubens Barrichello. Can Brawn make it a one-two in the team’s first season?
Who will drive for which team next year? In fact most of the driver changes will have been decided, but very few have been publicised – only six have contracts officially in place. After a protracted and semi-public courtship, Alonso will definitely be moving to Ferrari to replace Raikkonen – who is tipped to join Mercedes, though there are also rumours that Button’s salary demands could prove too much for Brawn but get him the drive alongside Hamilton. Either way Kovalainen looks like he needs a new job, and strong performance by him would help impress potential employers
Will the drivers just have fun? With most of the decisions made and the championships won, a lot of the pressure is now off. This could be the time for the drivers to enjoy themselves.
It was a season of two halves. Brawn had an astonishing quick package with terrific aerodynamic performance and complete dominance of the technical changes for 2009; Button won six of the first seven races.
But then the others began to catch up. Their improvements and some poor results from Brawn meant Ferrari, McLaren and especially Red Bull were able to put in a strong second-half challenge.
Along the way there was an unusual amount of drama, the kind of thing that keeps F1 interesting. In the season opener, the Australian GP, Lewis Hamilton was disqualified from the race for misleading the stewards about Janno Trulli overtaking the McLaren while the safety car was out (overtaking is not allowed in those conditions).
The following Malaysian GP was held in monsoon-like conditions and stopped before 75 percent of the race-distance had been completed, meaning half-points only were awarded – for only the fifth time in F1 history.
Then there was the freak accident in qualifying for the Hungarian GP which hospitalised Ferrari's Felipe Massa. A spring that had fallen off Rubens Barrichello's car hit Massa on the helmet when he was travelling at 260kph. Massa took no further part in the season, but has been testing again and was even considered for a drive in Abu Dhabi.
Seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher, a consultant to Ferrari, was mooted to be his replacement; in the event he decided that a neck injury was too dangerous to risk and Massa’s replacement was named as test driver Luca Badoer.
Almost immediately BMW announced that they would be withdrawing from Formula One after the end of the season – Honda had pulled out before the season started, selling out to Brawn – and Renault sacked Nelson Piquet after he failed to score. Bad move: Piquet claimed he had been asked to crash at the 2008 Singapore GP in a strategy designed to aid teammate and eventual race winner Fernando Alonso.
Renault was found guilty and given a two-year ban; team MD Flavio Briatore and engineering supremo Pat Symonds both resigned, and the ban was suspended on the grounds that those individuals had been the only people at fault.
Meanwhile McLaren was starting to get pole positions, Barrichello was starting to out-point Button, and in Belgium Giancarlo Fisichella produced one of the shocks of the season by, qualifying his Force India on Pole before finishing the race second only to Raikkonen – Ferrari’s first win of the season.
With so many teams coming good so late in the season, and with much of the pressure off the drives, the Abu Dhabi GP could be a stunner – a real one-off race between drivers and cars, rather than one decided on strategies and the need to take a long view.
