The journey to F1

FROM THE F1 MAGAZINE - While Formula One has proven a hit in the UAE, the country has yet to produce a driver in the series. Gary Meenaghan looks at the hurdles to making it happen.

Karting at Al Ain Raceway. Ravindranath K / The National

When analysing elite sport, regardless of the discipline, two factors are as good as guaranteed.

Firstly, the Gulf region will be making inroads to have a tangible presence on the sport’s annual calendar and, secondly, a furious search will be on to discover and polish a local competitor who can be parachuted into the international spotlight.

For decision-makers involved in elite-level football, it is impossible to ignore the Middle East: the region’s protagonists bankroll several of the world’s most prominent football clubs. In golf, recent years have seen the Arab world strengthen its stature on the European Tour’s calendar to appear no fewer than four times each year.

Neither sport features an elite Gulf-born athlete, although there is evidence of potential on the peripheries. The same cannot yet be said for Formula One.

This week sees the fifth iteration of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and next year’s race in Bahrain will mark 10 years since the first F1 event in the Middle East.

The top tier of motorsport remains the most important in the region, but as the sport continues to develop and a motor-racing tradition is manufactured in the minds of Arab youths, the F1 paddock and the rosters for the feeder series are more barren of Middle East drivers than they were a decade ago.

In 2003, the UAE had a representative in the British Formula Three racing series, a few rungs down from F1.

The Abu Dhabi-born Saif Al Assam was the first Arab driver to compete in F3, but saw his dreams of progression vanish when a high-speed crash at England’s Donington Park left him with a shattered right hip.

He was visited in hospital by his F3 racing rival and future F1 driver Nelson Piquet Jr.

“I was a step ahead of people like Lewis Hamilton,” Al Assam said in 2009.

“At Silverstone, I would be testing my Formula Three car and he would be testing his Formula Renault car. I would look down on him.”

Since Al Assam was forced to give up motor racing, 10 years ago, the UAE’s hopes of having an Emirati driver on the grid have stalled. This season features no Arab drivers in F1 or its three popular direct feeder series GP2, Formula Renault 3.5 or the German Touring car series (DTM).

While there is encouragement that young Emiratis, one as young as five, are competing in domestic karting, the traditional first step for prospective drivers, there is no immediate prospect for F1.

Back in late 2009, when Yas Marina Circuit was preparing to host its inaugural grand prix, Richard Cregan, the circuit’s chief executive, spoke regularly about Abu Dhabi’s 10-year plan to have an Emirati in F1 by 2020.

Ahead of this year’s race, the Irishman feels progress is on track, not so much in uncovering one specific driver, but in creating a clear route for drivers to progress through to F1 in the future.

“We don’t yet have a star that we can point at and say: ‘This driver is going to get into F1’,” Cregan said. “But what we do have is a mechanism in which we can select young drivers and put them into programmes that will get them there.

“Sustainability was always one of our pillars and rather than

focus on individuals, we have focused on creating different platforms. We have created a route now to get drivers into F1 and we hope it will bear fruit within that 10-year period.”

Immediately following this weekend’s grand prix, both GP2 and GP3 will run young-driver tests at Yas Marina Circuit. Abu Dhabi Motorsport Management has agreed a deal with Bruno Michel, the chief executive of the two series, to have at least a pair of Emirati drivers take part.

“It is exciting, but we have to be very careful while looking for the young UAE nationals,” Cregan said. “GP3 is a very fast series and the last thing we want to do is put young people in there who are not ready and end up very far away from the competition.”

Martin Whitmarsh, the team principal of F1’s McLaren-Mercedes, acknowledged the landscape of F1 is changing and shifting towards a more global sport from its traditional European base. However, he added the likelihood of an Arab driver reaching the elite level any time soon is “very slim” due to the lack of motorsport heritage in the region.

“It has been in the culture of Europeans and South American aspirants for years. Historically, though, the Middle East hasn’t had that culture — of sending children to Europe while recognising the majority of them will undergo a huge commitment and fail,” Whitmarsh said.

“I am sure there are budding young drivers in the Middle East,” he added, but said seeing one of them in F1 “won’t happen in three, four or even five years.

“It’s probably about 10 years away from happening, which means people have to commit their young talent and have them come to where the real competition is. We haven’t seen that yet and, until we do, I don’t think it is going to happen.”

Sauber, the financially challenged Swiss marque, have agreed a lucrative sponsorship deal with three Russian companies on the premise the F1 team provide a race seat to Sergey Sirotkin, a 17-year-old driver with only six months experience in Formula 3.5.

In a world where a race seat is increasingly available to the highest bidder, Sirotkin’s inexperience has proved worrisome but irrelevant. So, with vast amounts of liquid wealth in the Gulf, could a pay driver soon spring from the region?

Cregan said such a route is “not the wisest move”. Likewise, Mohammed ben Sulayem, president of the Automobile and Touring Club of the UAE, vehemently dismissed suggestions of buying a seat.

He said: “If there is money for tracks then why not funds for drivers?

“It has to be a country-wide committee, though. We should not care whether he is from Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Al Ain, Sharjah or Fujairah.

“Forget what his last name is. If we go hunting for talent, then we should have the best candidates and a serious programme. Then we will achieve our goal.”

Heikki Kovalainen, a former McLaren racer who has competed in more than 100 grands prix, lost his seat at Caterham last year because he refused to pay for it.

He believes an Arab driver in F1 is an inevitability, although he does not expect it to happen before the 2020 target.

“The Middle East has great facilities, so it is kind of a surprise they don’t have any Arab drivers already, but one day there will be,” he said. “The motorsport culture there is quite low and they have other sports and other things that they do, instead. It will take a generation or two to build that culture and get them into karts and motorsport, generally.”

Creating that culture has long been the objective for Abu Dhabi; producing a driver is the natural consequence.

In that regard, Cregan and his colleagues are moving in the right direction.

Gauging just how far along the road the emirate is in its plans will become clearer after the GP3 young-driver test next week.