The making of a Grand Prix

Freight is unloaded in the pit lane in the run-up to the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park in Melbourne in March. Sutton Motorsport Images

ABU DHABI // The global sporting extravaganza that is Grand Prix racing reaches the UAE capital tonight when the first Formula One cars arrive at Abu Dhabi International Airport.As excitement mounts ahead of the country�s inaugural Formula One race, team personnel also are due to begin reaching Abu Dhabi this weekend to begin preparations for the event. The drivers will fly in later in the week and will stay in some of the most prestigious hotels. And then come thousands of fans flooding into Abu Dhabi as motorsport fever takes over the city. The race is expected to attract as many as 60,000 spectators.The first team personnel prepare the garages for the first day of practice, on Friday, and also build the hospitality areas each team needs for its dozens of staff.Enthusiasts hoping to snatch an early glimpse of the 317kph machines that will do battle on November 1, however, are likely to be disappointed. All that will be seen upon arrival, if anything, is a series of wooden crates inside which lie pieces of vehicles to be assembled at Yas Marina.The high-pitched scream of single-seat racing machines has already been reverberating around the Yas Marina Circuit, however, as the slightly smaller GP2 cars, which will compete in a support race to the Grand Prix, were due to test at the track yesterday and today.The Formula One cars come to Abu Dhabi directly from Brazil, having been dispatched on Monday evening, the day after Jenson Button clinched the world championship in Sao Paulo.Steve Nielsen, the sporting manager for Renault F1, said his team was bringing to Abu Dhabi, as to every race, two cars, four sets of spares, large amounts of garage equipment and various other pieces of kit needed to run a race.�That weighs between 32 and 35 tonnes and is transported by air,� he said. �We also send a further eight tonnes by sea freight, so in total that�s around 40 tonnes.� For European races, teams move their equipment by lorry, with the cars stowed in large trailers that also contain hundreds of spare parts.However, for �fly-away� races such as Abu Dhabi, they travel by air, the equipment being sent in air freight containers. Between each fly-away race, the equipment is usually transported back to the European headquarters of the teams. This air transport is handled for all teams by the Formula One Management organisation.After an event, the teams move at a speed to rival even the fastest F1 cars. Within an hour of the last post-race press conference, every item in the team garages is packed back into crates to be shipped back to team HQ. Even the cars are rapidly dismantled; after just a few minutes they are unrecognisable from those that were so recently speeding around the circuit.A team�s equipment list for each race includes nearly a kilometre of data and power cables, along with about 50 computers and 100 radios.Renault is bringing about 85 team members to the race, ranging from engineers and mechanics to marketing personnel and hospitality staff. Each team travels about 100,000 miles per season, or more if they test outside Europe in winter.Hotel rooms, said Mr Nielsen, were booked about a year in advance once the race calendar was confirmed, while flights were booked several months ahead. The Emirates Palace hotel, believed to be the base for the Ferrari team over the next week, was fully booked more than a year ago, as was the Hilton, where the McLaren team are staying. Anyone visiting any of the city�s leading hotels over the next week is bound to bump into overall-wearing F1 technical crew.It is a far cry from the Formula One travelling show of a few decades ago. For example, in 1968 the Tyrrell team took just 10 people to each race: six mechanics, two drivers, the team principal, Ken Tyrrell; and his wife.Fast forward to 1997 and the Stewart team, for example, had about 40 people at each race, still less than half the number of a 2009 entrant.Abu Dhabi will be one of the hottest races of the year, but Mr Nielsen said high temperatures should not pose problems.�The team is well used to racing in hot conditions and the latest generation engines are well capable of running at peak revs in high temperatures,� he said.However, he said racing in Bahrain had taught the team the danger of the engine ingesting sand, which could �impact severely� on engine performance.�Also, any sand on the track surface can embed in the tyres and reduce grip so it�s important that the drivers keep to the racing line as much as possible to keep their tyres clean,� he said.When teams arrive at the Yas Marina Circuit they will set up secure data links to their headquarters so telemetry can be sent back and analysed by engineers.The transport of fuel, tyres and some other equipment is organised by the companies supplying these, not the teams.Even with a week to go, the number of journalists attending the race is unknown. A typical race could attract as many as 600 journalists, but the number could be smaller here because the championship was decided in Button�s favour at last weekend�s Brazilian Grand Prix. Just over 100 reporters and photographers from the GCC have been accredited to attend the race. The number of permanently accredited reporters, from countries as far apart as New Zealand and Brazil, is around 400, and while every one of those could attend the race, the true number will not be known until Thursday.�A lot of the reporters arrange their own transport,� said Matt Majendie, a freelance F1 reporter who writes for The National. �They are almost obsessive in their conversations about how much their hotels cost, and how they managed to get a cheaper flight because of three connections. And even with a week to go, a lot of them still didn�t have their flights to Brazil because it was so expensive at the beginning. It is almost like a gamble to them.� The difficult task for those journalists who have not yet finalised their trips to Abu Dhabi will be finding accommodation; most of the city�s major hotels had sold out by the summer of 2008, soon after the race date was confirmed. Running the Yas Marina Circuit media centre is another a logistical challenge; it is large enough to accommodate 600 people. Accredited journalists will be treated to large screens showing the action on the track, waiter service and a rooftop lounge with a view of much of the circuit.�You get the same guys in press rooms everywhere in the world you go,� said Mr Majendie. �It makes no difference whether you are in Bahrain, Australia or Monaco, you see exactly the same faces. �It is a very weird little family that travels around together. F1 is a bizarre world to understand.�dbardsley@thenational.aerhughes@thenational.ae