With the track being so varied, the race winner is hard to predict

Being responsible for hosting F1’s newest Grand Prix – and a season finale at that – isn’t an easy task. Bernie Ecclestone will be watching. Anyone with any roots in the Middle East will be watching. Anyone with any business interest in the region will be watching. The majority of the motor sport world will probably be watching. The Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi GP will be taken seriously, you can bet on that. And it isn’t just about seeing whether the UAE is capable of hosting a world-class sporting event. There are bigger economic implications for Abu Dhabi and the country as a whole. It’s a big ask.

But then, there were a few sceptics in the run up to the first Singapore Grand Prix in 2008, and that didn’t turn out too badly (even if you ignore the Renault ‘Crashgate’ saga). The race itself looming ever closer, there’s still building work constantly being carried out, although the Herman Tilke-designed track is ready. It’s safe to say that, right now, Abu Dhabi Motorsport Management is keeping busy.

Twenty one varying corners make up the Middle East’s second F1 circuit, with the longest straight on the calendar, at 1.17km. At the end of it, speeds will be close to 320kph, before drivers will be hitting the brakes hard for the tight left-hander of turn eight. Any driver error here will reward the spectators, with a run-off area positioned underneath the grandstand.  That will end the first half of the track - the high speed section. The second features tighter corners, the cars going through the picturesque Monaco-style harbourside from turns 15 to 19, as well as under the five-star, 500-room Yas Hotel. Like Singapore, there’s also the floodlit night racing to look forward to, as the start time is scheduled for 5pm (at daylight) and ending in darkness.

There’s a strong chance the Abu Dhabi GP will be the setting for the championship decider, too. Heading into the Japanese Grand Prix, Jenson Button has a controlling 15-point lead in the driver’s standings. But if Rubens Barichello can finish far enough ahead of his British teammate in Suzuka and Sao Paolo, in Brazil, we may yet see a two-way battle for the driver’s title on Middle East soil.

And what of the winner? ‘Never make predictions, especially about the future,’ said the famous American baseball player Casey Stengel. Wise words, perhaps. Yet F1 is all about gossip, rumour and speculation, so it’s worth it to at least get a taste for what the running order could be like. Or at least the podium.

First we can consider the combination of low and high downforce sections and off-camber corners of the Yas Marina Circuit. The first part of the track could suit Ferrari, McLaren and Renault, who all run the KERS system and will undoubtedly use it to their advantage in the fast flowing section. The Brawn cars of Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello have also shown to be equally fast in high speed tracks and can’t be discounted. Then we have the second part – the infield section. This part will suit the kind of drivers who like the tight, tricky turns of Budapest or Valencia. So, we could see Fernando Alonso and Nico Rosberg in the mix, both of whom looked strong in the Hungarian and Spanish GPs.

You could narrow down the finishing order further by looking at tyre and brake wear, but, as no cars have set their slicks on the track and no data has been collected, it’s impossible to take these factors into consideration.

Taken as a whole, the track resembles Shanghai or Istanbul in some ways, in that there’s a mix of low and high downforce corners, so the teams/drivers who find the best compromise in their setup will have the best chance of winning (For the record, this year, it was the Red Bull Racing and Brawn cars which looked strongest in China and Turkey). The engineers will no doubt be furiously running race simulations on their multitude of computers after the penultimate race in Brazil.

With the track being so varied and with six different winners so far this year, it looks like the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will be far from a foregone conclusion. Just the way we like it, really.