Desert F1x

Abu Dhabi’s new Formula One circuit goes into action today.

Hot, hot, hot, you might say of Abu Dhabi, the desert emirate on the Persian Gulf coast. You’d be right, and only the latest reason for such a summary judgement would be the state-of-the-art $1.5 billion racetrack the state’s rulers have built to bring Formula One to West Asia.

The numbers are truly pharaonic: the Yas Marina was begun in early 2007 and, according to Formula One, “a workforce of 14,000 invested 35 million man hours shifting 1.6 million cubic metres of earthwork, laying 720,000 square metres of asphalt and pouring 225,000 cubic metres of concrete”.

They also built the luxury Yas Hotel which provides its own entertainment — has the United Arab Emirates cornered the world market in mindbogglingly expensive and bizarrely playful hotels? — because it straddles the F1 circuit itself, and what’s more, is designed with an enormous shell-like of 4,800 panels which will be illuminated in changing colours after dark. The hotel cost nearly half a billion dollars, of which the roof alone cost half. All 499 rooms and suites are booked this weekend, for the inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix today, even though the top suites cost over $8,000 a night.

Another novel feature of the track is that the pit-lane exit actually passes under the circuit itself. And it’s an unforgiving circuit — like genuine street circuits, there are no soft landings. If a driver makes a mistake he will hit hard crash barriers. F1 driver Jenson Button, the current world champion, said appreciatively that “When you look at the layout, it doesn’t seem that exciting but when you actually drive it, it’s fantastic. It has a bit of everything, with high- and low-speed corners, positive and negative camber and the walls are pretty close to you most of the way round.”

The name says “marina”, so on the same site is the Yas Yacht Club, another remarkable-looking structure. And a Ferrari World theme park is under construction next door.

Abu Dhabi took its time warming up, unlike flashy Dubai. But Dubai was tripped up by the financial crisis; Abu Dhabi is barrelling ahead. As a tourist you will find little heritage to explore, but there is astonishing architecture being built there for aristocratic Western institutions. Think of Frank Gehry’s topsy-turvy design for the Abu Dhabi branch of New York’s Guggenheim Museum, and Jean Nouvel’s giant upturned saucer for the local branch of Paris’s Louvre.

You can go to Abu Dhabi now, for F1 and shopping, or wait a while and, surprise, surprise, go there for the culture.