8,000 litres of paint and 336 shipping containers: what it takes to stage the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

Army of workers descend on Yas Marina Circuit

A worker applying paint to Yas Marina Circuit. Courtesy Seven Media

Thousands of litres of paint, hundreds of plants and an army of workers toiling for 6,920 hours to clean Yas Marina Circuit's white canopies.

Over the next few days, an army of gardeners, cleaners and painters will descend on Abu Dhabi's Formula One track to put the finishing touches ahead of this week's race.

More than 70,000 fans will descend on the ground from Friday — 70 per from abroad — along with hundreds of team officials, VIPs, celebrities and the world's best drivers for the event which culminates on Sunday with the main race.

A cleaner getting rid of dust from a canopy at Yas Marina. Courtesy Seven Media

While the championship is a foregone conclusion — Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton has won — everything still has to be right. And the circuit is already buzzing to make sure Yas Marina Circuit looks its best.

Squads of painters will work around the clock to apply a fresh coat of paint to the 5.5 kilometre track, using 4,500 litres of "Yas blue" paint, 720 litres of ivory, 1,440 litres of red and 1,440 litres of white. Equipped with high-pressure hoses, a cleaning team will tackle 228 canopies over a mammoth 6,920 hours of non-stop cleaning work to remove dust. Gardeners will also prune and plant 2.52 acres of flowers including 886 varieties of palms and 529 potted plants.

Efforts are also ramping up to make sure all the ten teams have a seamless experience on landing in the UAE. Fresh from the season’s penultimate race in Brazil, the teams and the hundreds of personnel will arrive on a fleet of planes, ships and trucks, all loaded with the essentials that keep F1 on the road. Seven charter flights will land at Abu Dhabi Airport and each plane will be loaded with about 100 tonnes of gear, while Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa Port will handle 336 containers — totalling 1,000 tonnes — filled with the kit needed.

It will take more than 400 people using 70 forklift trucks to offload the vast amounts of the equipment once it reaches Yas Marina Circuit while 600 trucks will move the gear to and from the track.

As well as taking up 18 villas and 70 garages the teams will go through 30,000 litres of drinks during race weekend, while more than 200 cylinders of gas and 4 tonnes of dry ice will be delivered.