F1's Lewis Hamilton roars into Abu Dhabi

With just nine days to go before the world's best drivers receive the green light to start the 2011 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina on Sunday, November 13, most of the behind-the-scenes work has already been completed to ensure that the event runs as smoothly as a slick racing tyre on a two-kilometre straight.

Right now the finishing touches are being put to the painting of the run-off areas and track demarcation lines. The first is to show the circuit in its best light to a worldwide television audience, the latter to assist marshals and race stewards in determining whether drivers have in fact ‘crossed the line', in contravention of the motorsports' governing body, the FIA's regulations.

Radio communication sets used by hundreds of race officials, security staff, marshals and medical teams are being tested. The FIA will already be triple-checking the various equipment, signs, medical and safety systems located around the track. 

Life in the fast lane

Meanwhile, former F1 champion Lewis Hamilton will probably be gearing up for his hectic pre-race week in Abu Dhabi, possibly bobbing around Lake Geneva, near his Swiss home in Luins. To be fair, he's probably already spent a couple of hours in the gym today just to keep fit enough to cope with the physical demands of driving a modern race car, and two more practising the Yas Marina Circuit on a simulator to prepare himself mentally for the spectacular Hermann Tilke track.

But will he be looking forward to roaring into Abu Dhabi, especially after his relationship with singer and X Factor USA judge Nicole Scherzinger crashed over their conflicting work schedules?

The 26-year-old driver's team are doing all they can to shield him from the spotlight.

Just last week the trackside Vodaphone McLaren villa, a quiet oasis where Lewis can retire from the noise and hustle of the Yas Marina pit lane, will have been filled with the paraphernalia needed to keep the team's managers, crews and star drivers happy for the five or six days they'll spend at the circuit.

Security will be tight - the villa is the only peaceful haven for the teams, tucked as it is away from the howling V8 engines and incessant demands of the world's media, which descends on a Formula One race, tearing into every shred of personal and technical information. Poor Lewis has been on the receiving end of more than his fair share of this feeding frenzy lately, with a series of on and off track incidents under seemingly permanent scrutiny. Perhaps the British driver will be thinking life in the fast lane isn't always quite what it's cracked up to be.

With a 14-day break after the previous race in New Delhi, officials at Yas Marina will have had the luxury of receiving the F1 teams' race equipment earlier this week, giving them plenty of time to move it to the correct pits in advance of the teams' arrivals. Last year the Abu Dhabi event took place just one week after the Brazilian GP, leading to a frantic, but successful, rush to get it all in place just hours before practice started. But this year, by Wednesday, November 9, (when Lewis will be at the Tag Heuer store at The Dubai Mall) the teams' mechanics and crew chiefs will be assembling their vital telemetry centres, refuelling rigs, pit wall cabins and numerous other essentials necessary to ensure their 640kgs of motor vehicle circulates Yas Marina's 5.554-kilometre circuit, three thousands of a second quicker than the next guy's. 

Off-track action

Lewis will begin the endless laps of meet-and-greet events with team and event sponsors, race organisers and media (for those inevitable questions about Nicole) and of course, his fans. And when he's not greeting, he'll be in the gym, and when he's not in the gym, he'll be going over technicalities with his race engineer, and when he's not with his engineer he'll be eating from a carefully prepared diet. He might be able to blow off steam by taking his new company car for a quick run up to Jebel Hafeet. Not every company driver gets to work for a firm which makes super exotic race cars for a living and which then branches out into building ‘mere' supercars as a sideline, but such is Lewis's luck.

So given even half that chance, no-one could blame him if he borrowed a McLaren MP4-12C road car and got out of Abu Dhabi as fast as its 592 horsepower twin-turbo V8 engine would carry him. Which is very fast indeed. His need for speed suitably sated, he'll almost certainly head for his hotel for a quick nap.

On Wednesday evening more than600 marshals, recovery crews, medical crews and race officials will descend upon Yas Marina circuit to pick up their security-cleared passes, branded overalls and brightly coloured bibs. These bibs must be worn at all times within the circuit grounds, since they identify the very specific areas of the circuit where the personnel of this essential army of volunteers can operate. 

Last chance for a lie in

By Thursday morning, the volunteers are scattered around the entire track, monitoring every centimetre of the circuit, and only then can practice begin.

Lewis might well treat himself to a bit of a lie in on Thursday. It'll be the last chance he gets before the end of the race on Sunday. After a light breakfast on Monday, he'll be whisked away to the circuit from his five star hotel (provided by a key sponsor, naturally) in a complimentary limo (provided by the hotel or race organisers, naturally). There's no point battling the traffic personally and risking a drive-through penalty at this stage, after all.

Much to Lewis's chagrin, that nice Sebastian Vettel has already retained the Driver's World Championship he first won at an emotional 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, so the final races of the 2011 calendar are very much about testing concepts and components that might make their way onto the 2012 McLaren race cars, in the hopes that Hamilton and Jenson Button might appear on the top step of the podium more often in 2012. Consequently, practice times only give a vague reflection of the actual strengths of the drivers and their cars, so the data from Thursday's and Friday's laps tends to cause more consternation at the desks of motorsport magazine editors than it does race team managers.

Happy in the knowledge that regardless of setting a tortoise's or a hare's pace, he'll have given the world's media something meaningless to talk about, Lewis will thus be preparing himself for the real thing - qualifying on Saturday. Introduced as a means of attracting even more media attention to the buildup of a Grand Prix, qualifying for grid position has become an art form and technical extravaganza rolled into one. Assuming he's fortunate enough to avoid any rain showers or indeed bow waves from approaching super-yachts in the Marina, Lewis is quite likely to find himself among the top four qualifiers. No doubt he'll be hoping that Felipe Massa and his seemingly magnetic Ferrari will be several grid positions further back, saving them both the effort of an on-track contre-temps, and with the best will in the world, he probably wouldn't mind if his favourite teammate Jenson had an indifferent start and left Lewis to battle it out with the boys from Red Bull.

Regardless of the outcome next Sunday, two things are for sure - the post-race celebrations will go on into the night, and a certain Mr Hamilton will be there among them. And with his new-found personal freedom, a hard-earned personal fortune, and the emotional release that comes with knowing he's finished a tough week at the office, don't be surprised if you see him letting his hair down after the big event. Or at least one of his sideburns. 

Tim Ansell is a Dubai-based writer