Yas Marina wants for nothing in terms of facilities. If only the same could be said of its track.
Track data: Yas Marina
| Lap length | 5.554km (3.451 miles) |
| Grand prix distance | 305.355km (189.739 miles) |
| Lap record (race) | 1’40.279 (Sebastian Vettel, 2009) |
| Fastest lap (any session) | 1’38.434 (Lewis Hamilton, 2011, qualifying two) |
| Tyre compounds | See drivers’ choices |
| 2015 Rate the Race | 5.25 out of 10 |
| 2015 Driver of the Weekend | Sergio Perez |
But the circuit which has the honour of holding this year’s title-deciding race leaves everything to be desired when it comes to challenging the world’s best drivers and cars.
It’s wide, smooth, flat and – aside from a pair of lengthy straights – slow. Whatever brief the track designer was given, showcasing F1 at its best was not it.
“It’s not the most thrilling of tracks,” says master of understatement Daniil Kvyat, “as many of the corners are very similar”. Other drivers have been similarly dismissive of its untaxing, stop-start nature.
The track has produced few riveting races since it first appeared on the calendar in 2009. The surprise outcome of the 2010 title-decider and Sebastian Vettel’s race through the field two years later stick in the mind. But last year’s forgettable finale was more typical of what we’ve come to expect from this venue.
Abu Dhabi’s stable climate means we can discount the possibility of surprising weather changes playing a role in Sunday’s championship finale. But Pirelli’s decision to bring its most aggressive tyre selection could offer the drivers new strategic options this year.
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A lap of Yas Marina
The pit lane entrance joins the track at this point and we have seen some near-misses as drivers blend in with traffic. Fernando Alonso took a punishing ride over the kerbs here in 2013.
As the drivers leave turn four at speed they are quickly upon the next sequence of corners: a slow chicane followed by a hairpin. “You go down the hill, braking into six – very tricky braking turning into six, then straight away into seven,” explains Romain Grosjean. “You need to be well positioned for the hairpin going down the back straight. It’s tricky to get the car to turn.”
Two long straights separated by the turn eight/nine chicane follow. “Again you need to be well positioned between the left and right-hand side corners,” says Grosjean. “Then it’s another straight line on to 11, 12 and 13. It’s a triple chicane and as soon as you exit that part you go flat out then brake for turn 14, which is a 90-degree left-hand side corner.”
“The second to last corner is good,” comments Grosjean. “It’s high speed in fourth or fifth gear.”
After that the run-off area at the final corner invites drivers to run wide. “The last corner is very tricky,” Grosjean explains. “It’s very wide on the entry phase with the pit lane on the right-hand side. It’s not easy to find a line.”
2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
- 2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix team radio transcript
- 2016 F1 Fanatic Predictions Championship won by SBFIM29
- Top ten pictures from the 2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
- 2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix driver ratings
- Rosberg ends longest-ever wait for championship
Maciek (@maciek)
23rd November 2016, 12:29
Sigh, this track truly is an abomination unto racing and stands, I think, as a fairly damning legacy of the latter years of Ecclestone’s stewardship of the sport, if anyone in the observable universe still needed convincing, that is. The really frustrating thing is it wouldn’t even need that many changes to be quite a bit better. Anyhoo, fingers crossed, I’m hoping against hope that the race will prove worthy of a title decider.
Nick Wyatt (@nickwyatt)
23rd November 2016, 12:35
The vanity project to end all vanity projects.
Phylyp (@phylyp)
23rd November 2016, 12:35
Parading the cars in front of the grandstands seems to have been the objective, particularly when considering turns 5 & 6, and pretty much the whole of sector 3.
OmarRoncal - Go Seb!!! (@)
23rd November 2016, 12:49
I read somewhere that the awful track layout was designed to agree with the needs of rich people with supercars who want to test them and boast about “driving in an F1 circuit” but would destroy those cars in a challenging track.
Strontium (@strontium)
23rd November 2016, 16:55
@omarr-pepper that really wouldn’t surprise me one bit. And if it is the case, it has worked very well, as every rich man and his and car seem to go round there and talk about it being a great track.
Bebilou (@bebilou)
23rd November 2016, 13:26
This track is a disgrace to F1. How to have plenty of space, plenty of money, and end up with the worst layout on the calendar…
evert
23rd November 2016, 13:26
Tilkes wet dream.. lots of money and low on inspiration.
Tony Mansell
23rd November 2016, 13:56
Its like the gold plated Ferrari’s I see pootling around near my office. It tells you what money with no limitation ends up looking like.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
23rd November 2016, 14:01
Sorry, next time I’m in the area I’ll wave.
Shimks (@shimks)
23rd November 2016, 14:49
Haha, good one!
Gubstar
23rd November 2016, 14:51
Absolute shambles of a track. And to have it for the championship showdown just highlights everything that’s wrong with the sport currently.
Tilke had a blank cheque and blank piece of land to create a racing circuit for the ages. And what he came up with is an eye sore that does not promote racing. Its the EXACT same issue as the FOM tv camera positions. They are the way they are to promote sponsors and advertising. The sport and racing itself is not even on the priority list.
Lets all hope and pray that Liberty media (with the help of Ross Brawn) sort out this mess before Formula E come up with better, lighter and longer lasting batteries!!!
Shimks (@shimks)
23rd November 2016, 14:51
@keithcollantine
I bet if you set up a competition to redesign Yawn Marina, you would get a lot of response. It would be really fun to see fan’s ideas. And. although highly unlikely, who knows what may happen if the right pair of eyes saw the winning entry.
Sean Doyle (@spdoyle17)
23rd November 2016, 16:13
Oddly enough, it could be fixed fairly easily: Increase the radius of the 2-4 complex (rounding 2 off a little in the process), replacing the first chicane/hairpin with a more rounded off hairpin. After that, delete the second chicane and turn the connection between those turn complexes into a fast left-hand sweeper. The rest of the track just needs rounding off the corners.
End result, you get a very fast, very fluid track that would look impressive in person and on TV, while fitting in the artificial island at less cost than one would assume is needed.
Strontium (@strontium)
23rd November 2016, 17:02
@spdoyle17 more important than rounding off corners is giving them positive camber. Negative (which they are) destroys the flow and makes it harder to follow. I would definitely say get rid of, or at least modify, every chicane. They’re simply dreadful and there are three of them.
Sean Doyle (@spdoyle17)
23rd November 2016, 22:31
I forgot about that part, why not both, then?
StephenH
23rd November 2016, 18:53
Something like this ??
StephenH
23rd November 2016, 18:53
http://i.imgur.com/KCL6WAZ.png
Sean Doyle (@spdoyle17)
23rd November 2016, 22:37
2-3-4: Round off two, increase the distance on 3-4 to be more of a long, high speed right hander, turn the first chicane/hairpin into a longer hairpin starting where 5 is now, delete the second chicane into a sweeping left not unlike Pocono in the US, the following complex rounded off similar to Spoon at Suzuka, with more rounding for the rest of the track. Think staggered esses for the third sector. It would be very fast, yet challenging, because if you can’t drive smoothly, you can’t win. Drivers like Button and Perez could do very well, Button for his skills at flowing circuits, Perez for being able to be fast while saving tyres.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
23rd November 2016, 21:05
@shimks Funny you should mention that because back in 2010 I contacted another F1 architect to propose how they would improve the track’s configuration. Here’s what they came up with:
https://www.racefans.net/2010/11/23/how-yas-marina-could-be-changed-to-aid-overtaking/
Sean Doyle (@spdoyle17)
23rd November 2016, 22:42
While better, Keith, those triple hairpins remind me too much of Indy. I was there in ’00 and ’07, and it came across as stale in person. Yas Marina is horrible, and what I’ve gathered is that it was a genius idea turned rancid by 8-bit design power. All it needed was rounding off, and as @strontium mentioned, fixing the camber issues.
Shimks (@shimks)
24th November 2016, 12:43
Very interesting. Thanks for that. And to everyone else that responded!
Bebilou (@bebilou)
24th November 2016, 8:30
You can also check what @faketilke has proposed on Twitter. Seems fine.
https://twitter.com/faketilke/status/800977621290991616/photo/1
GeeMac (@geemac)
23rd November 2016, 15:14
As someone who has driven the track (in one of YMC’s F3000 cars) and stayed at the hotel the track was asked to pass under I can tell you that the track is dull (though the F3000 car wasn’t) and the hotel is god awful.
petebaldwin (@)
23rd November 2016, 16:08
What really annoys me is that there is no excuse for it being so bad. Several tracks are what they are because they exist in a fairly confined footprint. There isn’t a way of keeping the Peraltada because there isn’t room for a bigger runoff, for example. Similarly, Russia was designed around existing roads used for the Olympics and which limited the scope of what they could do.
Abu Dhabi was just a empty piece of land…. It just baffles me that they would spend the money they have to create the facility, make sure it is the last race of the season and even have rules changed to ensure the season doesn’t finish before the final race and yet they didn’t bother to insist on an adequate layout that produces decent racing.
Strontium (@strontium)
23rd November 2016, 17:03
@petebaldwin Worse still. It wasn’t a piece of empty land. It was a piece of purpose-built land. What a disgrace.
TED BELL
23rd November 2016, 16:50
Yas Marina is perhaps the most despised Grand Prix track currently on the schedule. A facility that simply doesnt challenge drivers and is usually a processional for better teams. Bernie please replace this mess with a new venue designed to be better for drivers, teams and fans world wide
George (@george)
23rd November 2016, 17:23
It’s like Tilke finished the first sector, then let the work experience kid finish off the rest with just a ruler.
I don’t vehemently despise this place as much as some, but it’s definitely not a fitting venue for the last race of the season.
mfreire
23rd November 2016, 20:01
Sochi IMO is worse because it’s so boring and repetitive. But Sochi and AD are the two worst circuits of the lot.
Sean Doyle (@spdoyle17)
23rd November 2016, 22:48
Interlagos really should be the finale. Or Laguna Seca, provided they follow the old track a little longer before the hairpin. CART was my first love, and that was the finale when I really started to appreciate open-wheel. By the time I really got it, I got to see “The Pass.” Track limits abused in a legendary way…
mfreire
24th November 2016, 2:50
I personally wish Australia was the finale and Brazil or Austin was the season opener, but I agree (of course) Interlagos is a far more suitable season closer than Abu Dhabi. Laguna Seca almost got the US GP in 1989- it was a toss-up (believe it or not) between the streets of Phoenix and Laguna Seca- and Phoenix was chosen because Laguna Seca was seen as too remote- even though it is only 1 1/2 hours away from San Jose and there are a number of hospitable towns such as Salinas and Monterey near to it. So it’s not at the Watkins Glen or Sebring level of remoteness. Yes- even back in those great times of beautiful looking and sounding cars Ecclestone and the FIA made inexplicably bad decisions like that.
Neil (@neilosjames)
23rd November 2016, 17:47
Without having to really do a lot of work at all and keeping it realistic and easy, how I’d modify it:
Get rid of the crappy little Turns 5&6 chicane near the start of the lap and pull the hairpin 50m forward to allow sufficient run-off (with a slightly curved exit onto the straight).
Make Turn 11 into… basically exactly the same layout as the Mexico stadium (which would be pretty good if it had a high-speed approach), and have it lead out towards Turn 15 through a long, nicely curved left to maintain or even increase the approach speed to what are two decent corners.
Double-apexify Turns 18 and 19 into a single corner.
Flatten or bank some of the crappy negative camber corners.
(and if that doesn’t work, get the bulldozers out)
mfreire
23rd November 2016, 18:28
They could make this track better… by taking out all the tight turns and replacing/bypassing them with fast corners. What this track really needs is an average speed of 150+ mph.
Martin
23rd November 2016, 19:56
Abu Dhabi as the final race of the season just annoys me greatly. I’m trying to reserve judgement until Sunday but come on, who could really prefer it over a championship deciding season finale at Brazil in the wet?
Oli (@dh1996)
23rd November 2016, 20:38
I’m a bit surprised that it’s so universally disliked. As most people, I am not a fan of Tilkedroms in the slightest but I would rate Yas Marina a thousand places above Sochi, Korea International or Mexico.
jimmi cynic
23rd November 2016, 21:33
On your near infinitely expanded sliding scale, I would rate all of those tracks a million trillion places below Spa, Silverstone, Suzuka and the other actual racetracks on the F1 calendar.
To ease a little of your surprise, as mentioned above, Sochi and Mexico, while horrible, had to fit an existing environment – at least they have borderline plausible excuses. Agree Korea was terrible, but it’s no longer on the calendar, thankfully.
Yas Marina was created with a blank slate and ended with a blank car park. Boggles the mind that an unlimited budget, purpose-built track could be so purposeless, dull and tacky – and the racing, worse. It’s a grand testament to Bernie’s Greed Gone Wild era.
Bebilou (@bebilou)
24th November 2016, 8:40
Maybe for Mexico, but in Sochi, they was a lot of room to make faster corners (for example in turns 2, 4, or 7).
But in both cases, with a bit of imagination, something much better should have been done. Tilke has some constraints, I understand that, but nobody forces him to stay in that “straight-hairpin-straight-slow corner” pattern.
Captain Pie (@captainpie)
23rd November 2016, 21:45
I actually miss Korea, that was much more let down by location I feel. TThe track itself was ok.
Bebilou (@bebilou)
24th November 2016, 8:34
Agree. The 2nd part in Korea was fast, interesting and challenging.
I miss India too: like Korea, the 2nd half of the track was very nice and fast.
These 2 tracks were way ahead of Sochi, Shanghai, or Bahrain.
roodda (@roodda)
23rd November 2016, 21:50
I can picture it now, Verstappen will pull off a number of stunning overtakes (the majority of all overtakes in the race) and we will get responses such as “see there’s nothing wrong with Abu Dhabi, we don’t need to change it”.
Jerejj
24th November 2016, 15:16
+1
Selbbin (@selbbin)
23rd November 2016, 22:53
To me it looks like they tried to be Monaco, with the hairpin, dual straights, running alongside the docks. And by that I mean they literally just said ‘make it like Monaco’ because that’s the most famous track to anyone outside of F1. They forgot that Monaco isn’t a good track for racing and gets it’s excitement from the rough surface and tight walls – basically, driver skill to stay intact. Remove those and you just have a procession.
Selbbin (@selbbin)
23rd November 2016, 22:55
Thank GOD it’s not double points.
AmbroseRPM (@ambroserpm)
24th November 2016, 0:56
I enjoy driving around it in F1 2016, it’s one of the ones I most enjoy actually.
I do not enjoy watching a Grand Prix around it though.
Hasn’t Tilke worked out yet that 90 degree corners are not great for overtaking? As if he needs more examples, Sochi comes to mind…
stefano (@alfa145)
24th November 2016, 4:07
I see no mention here about the race in 2012 wich was an unforgettable classic. proves my theory that it’s not the ugly circuit that makes the bad racing (nor is the beatiful one that makes it good)
Strontium (@strontium)
24th November 2016, 18:20
@alfa145 even the reliably bad circuits can have a good race, just as the good circuits, such as Canada, have had occasionally dull races. A desert is dry but still gets rain a few times a year.
2012 bizarrely gave great races at both Abu Dhabi and Valencia. However, having hosted 7 races, 2012 is the only Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that is remotely memorable for the (positive) on-track action. It’s also important to remember that that race was as exciting as it was because of Vettel being out of position, Kimi winning, and a few safety cars that mixed everything else up. On merit of the actual racing itself, it wasn’t exceptionally spectacular.
To have 6 out of 7 races dull as they were is not a record that the track can be proud of.