Description :
With a budget of over 27 billion Euros, nothing was put on the side in Abu Dhabi, an extreme luxurious hotel passing over the track and lit at night, the stand exit going under the track, or the race starting during the day, and finishing at night fall.

It’s though unfortunate that this track which has the shape of a gun wasn’t made in priority for the pilots and the spectators, because, even though it wasn’t boring last year, one can’t say that it was thrilling ! Maybe the WDC being tossed here this year will make it more interesting ?

Présentation of the track :

• Island of Yas, @ Abu Dhabi
• Date : November 14th 2010
• Length : 5,554 km
• 58 laps, hence 305,470 km
• Anti clockwise
• Climat : dry and temperatures between 20°C in the morning & 32°C in the afternoon
• Site web : www.yasmarinacircuit.com




The track records :

Pole position : Lewis Hamilton, McLaren-Mercedes, 1:40.848 in 2009
Best lap : Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull Racing, 1:40.279 en 2009

Technical info :

• 70 gear changes hence 3850 in a race
• 60% of lap @ full throttle
• Tyre wear : high
• Break wear : high
• Downforce : intermediate/high
• Fuel usage : 2.7 kg/lap
• Rank in fuel usage : 12/19

In 2009 :

Pole position : Lewis Hamilton, McLaren-Mercedes, 1:40.848
Podium :
• 1 Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull Racing
• 2 Mark Webber, Red Bull Racing
• 3 Jenson Button, Brawn GP

Strategy : stops @ 19th & 42nd lap (2009)

Schedule :

12 Nov 2010
10:00-11:30 (*) First free practice
14:00-15:30 Second free practice
13 Nov 2010
11:00-12:00 Third free practice
14:00-15:00 Qualifying
14 Nov 2010
14:00 Race
(*) CET

Some 2009 impressions:

http://goo.gl/5IgtN
http://goo.gl/MXyHG

Regardless the 2010 WDC outcome I do hope for a thrilling race!

Somehow will have to be...
Fernando Alonso says that Red Bull should stick to its strategy : "It is now 3 months that Red Bull is pleading for equality between its pilots, now they have to continue with this philosophy".

I am dying of laughter

adamcooperf1 - Adam Cooper
The man from The Times reports that it's raining in Abu Dhabi!
4 minutes ago

NobleF1 - Jon Noble
Big question now is do I pack a raincoat for Abu Dhabi? What do you reckon @radarguruf1 ?
1 minute ago

Rain? Abu Dhabi? What is this madness?

Be fine by Friday, according to most weather forecasts....

I hope you can accept that a Spaniard can have moments of irony and wit.

He's joking.

I've heard rumors, that Bridgestone brings to Abu-Dhabi special compound of the softer tyres, which is much faster then harder one, and able to keep the pace almost till end of the race.

Apparently it is raining there at the moment...

Weather for Abu Dhabi

Hour by hour synopsis

maybe not then.... bbc says rain on Thurs...

Autosport GP info on front page says rain today...

It's like Singapore, but without the bumps and walls so close. I expect a repeat of Interlagos in terms of race pace and order. Only a huge mess up should take the title from Alonso.

if interlagos repeats itself, only a really huge mess would take the title from webber

So you think Vettel will move over?

Sure ! That's why I am laughing, I like his humour !

Red Bull's President Dietrich Mateschitz prefers to loose the WDC than to give team orders.
"Let our drivers do their race, and happen what will happen. If Alonso wins, it will mean we were unlucky. I predict a Hollywood-like ending".

Matechitz also talked about this year's German GP : "We are not manipulating races like Ferrari does. The whole world has condemned what they have done there, and we were calles idiots for not having done the same".
(from ESPN.fr)
This promises...

21 corners total

FIA Abu Dhabi

Red Bull heaven: Corners 2,3,4,15,16

The rest of the corners are too acute to be of an advantage to the Red Bulls. Many 3rd gear corners.



Ferrari might be as good as the Bulls here.

Abu Dhabi a sell out

Sunday's 2010 world championship finale in Abu Dhabi is sold out, organisers of the Yas Marina event have announced.
Richard Cregan, chief executive of Abu Dhabi Motorsports Management, said the capacity crowd on race day is about 50,000.
The event also sold out for its inaugural running a year ago.
"We are very proud to be staging the race and to know that we will see the crowning of the 2010 world champion," said Cregan.
Barely a day after seeing the chequered flag 12,000 kilometres away in Brazil, the F1 cars and equipment arrived at the impressive Abu Dhabi track on Tuesday.
Incredibly, despite the desert location and extremely low annual rainfall, some rain fell in Abu Dhabi late on Tuesday.
And some more light sprinkles are possible over the Grand Prix weekend, according to some forecasts.

http://www.motorsport.com/news/article.asp...93985&FS=F1

2 days to FP1 @ 10:00 GMT, and the weather says : sunshine for Fr.,Sat., & Sunday up to 32°

This must be a first: BBC are predicting on their Weather a 'Hail Shower' for Sunday's race. WTF?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/244

holy @#$%
i cant believe this, i thought u were jokin

I've written a brief blog post imagining one way the season decider could play out. Hopefully it shows how open the title fight is, some of the situations which could arise during the race, and some of the questions the race is likely to provoke. Give it a read, if you've got a minute to spare: http://hopkinsonf1.wordpress.com/2010/11/1...r-one-scenario/

Corners 2, 3 and 4 are all flat (much to my disappointment last year). There's no Red Bull advantage there.

I agree with you Paranoik0, more for reds I think ?

Technically the Best Lap ever at the circuit is a Hamilton 1:39.695 during Q2 of last years Qualifying.

Pole position was Hamilton's 1:40.948 and the Fastest Lap was Vettel's 1:40.279 during the race itself.

Just thought I'd clear some things up regarding terminology for lap records/times etc...


All in all I expect all of these times to be thrashed this weekend.

Reporting from Bahrain here..

I wont be surprised if it rained this weekend, we had a lot of rain (relatively) at the start of the weekend, the weather has been overcast in the persian gulf these few days, while a *storm* is expected over the weekend.

Keeping in mind an arab rain storm is not to be confused by the rains we saw in malaysia, suzuka etc, but still a very real prospect!


EDIT: Forgot to mention possible hail showers! we had one a few nights ago and more hail is expected over the weekend if the weather stays as predicted.. anyone knows of any F1 running that took place under falling icy stones before? lol

Sorry King, but lap time, and a full race can't be compared on terms of average runs throughout 50 & so laps.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I notice Renault have only supplied quotes from Robert Kubica and not Vitaly Petrov: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/88110

Normally teams supply quotes from both drivers and sometimes the Team Manager. The fact that Petrov doesn't have any quotes there from Renault is a tad suspicious.

Maybe not race conditions, especially because we're talking about refuelling in 2009 vs not in 2010. Nor could you compare pole position times because they had race fuel for Q3/pole time.

But Q2 times from last year could be used as a reference point for the best laps in comparison to 2010, since they're both similar conditions (fumes/empty tanks and fresh tyres)

So far the 2010 cars have pretty much obliterated the Q2 times of last season (which were generally the best laps the 2009 cars did throughout the weekend)

lol wut:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/244...mp;region=world

Probably an error that will be fixed by the time anyone clicks on it, but:



Is what it said for Abu Dhabi.

It's not an error - this is for the circuit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/5016

Still says heavy rain for Saturday on the 5 day forecast.

I'm thrilled to see this. Contrary to popular opinion, I believe that Abu Dhabi track is overtaking friendly (even as it's fairly dull otherwise) and there is potential to some nice overtaking moves, isn't there? Plus, last year teams had 2 stops so managing tire pressures to cope with the falling surface temperature was a lot easier than this year, and still some teams had problems with this and we saw fantastic fight towards the end. This year most the field will pit circa lat 17th so we might see fireworks towards the end.

I believe it's not that unusual for it to rain in the Emirates in November. A few months back I looked into moving there, did some reading and saw that it was on the "common myths" list that it never rains there. Funny thing is my first thought was about this race, wondering if we may get a surprise...

A wet race in the desert between 3 realistic championship contenders would certainly make for one of the most memorable finales ever...

It seems that Bernie can control even the weather:

http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/w...-11-10-1.316018

http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/41217.html

And look at this!

Don't worry, I have tweeted Ian Fergusson for an explanation! But wet qualy - I don't expect this, by the way - would be AWESOME!!! And who'd have thought it possible?!

In all seriousness, if it does rain this weekend, it will be like the "rain" we saw in Turkey, in so much as it will almost evaporate when it hits the ground. So we may see it on the lenses of the onboards, but it will not require cars to change to inters (unless the drainage at Yas Marina sucks*).

* which it might, if the Dubai autodrome experience taught us anything http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/general/...-dubai-1.148002

Also, we could get "rain like" conditions simply if the wind whipped enough sand and dust into the air to reduce grip on the track (a la Korea in FP1 and FP2) as well as reduce visibility.

only if it rains....full wets... sun comes out...inters..... rains...full wets.... sun.... inters.

I've seen it rain at Abu Dhabi in GT1 before and they stopped the session so it's not impossible. But 99% unlikely.

With plenty of rain, 4 realistic championship contenders may be more fitting... (can hope...)

Do Bridgestone even take wets to the desert!

Wow a wet race thats not what I was expecting.

Nah, not in Abu Dhabi. Any rain would burn off the surface anyway.

Wow, wet Abu Dhabi. It's even sound weird
Anyway, I hope so

I have posted the above quote in another thread because I don't believe this scenario has been discussed.

If this should play out all Alonso needs to do is mirror the first Red Bull driver to pit in order to avoid the other acting as a road block.

This is also where the dumb regulation that forces the use of two compounds per race could bite Red Bull in the ass.

on the LIVE portion of autosport.com they say "In truth, this weekend's forecast was never in doubt" so what's the real story?

Madness? This is...

And not to forget that both qualifying and race will end under night conditions. It is pitch black out there on Hamiltons's pole lap of 2009.

That's what the lights are for.

Great thread but I think you have got your CET and GMT mixed up.

For GMT (read UK & Ireland, Portugal, Canary Islands, etc.) the session times are actually

FP1 0900-1030 Fri 12 Nov
FP2 1300-1430 Fri 12 Nov
FP3 1000-1100 Sat 13 Nov
QUAL 1300-1400 Sat 13 Nov
RACE 1300 Sun 14 Nov

Go to Formula 1 and hit the "convert to my local time" button. Basically Abu Dhabi is GMT+4 (CET+3)...

I have a horrible feeling Autosport just rolled that out without looking at the forecasts, bit of egg on face for them but i'm sure it will be quickly corrected