Yas Marina Circuit ready for racing

The Crown Prince attends circuit handover as organisers of the F1 event take control of track; 90 per cent of tickets have been sold.

The Yas Marina Circuit was handed over by its developer to the organisers of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on schedule.

ABU DHABI // The Yas Marina Circuit was handed over by its developer to the organisers of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on schedule today, two and a half years after construction started and six weeks before the track's first race. Bruno Senna, nephew of the late racing champion Ayrton Senna, marked the occasion by completing the first official lap of the track in a Formula One car. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, attended the festivities. The new race track will host the first Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on November 1. The final event of the 2009 Formula One season is expected to attract almost 60,000 fans to Yas Marina to see a field of drivers that will include the current points leader, Jenson Button, reigning world champion, Lewis Hamilton, and a two-time world champion, Fernando Alonso. The new track is "an impressive example of the home-grown initiatives taking place in Abu Dhabi", Khaldoon al Mubarak, chairman of Abu Dhabi Motorsports Management (ADMM), said in a statement. "We congratulate Aldar Properties on delivering one of the most sophisticated motorsport circuits ever built." It took 14,000 workers more than 35 million man hours to build the 5.55km Yas Marina Circuit. It was constructed with 720,000 square metres of asphalt, 225,000 cubic metres of concrete and 25km of electrical cables. The race weekend will run October 30 to November 1 and include three support races: the Porsche Mobil1 Supercup, the Chevrolet Supercars Middle East Challenge, and the GP2 Asia Series. Tickets sales are going well, said Richard Cregan, the chief executive of Yas Marina Circuit and ADMM. He said 90 per cent of the tickets for the grand prix had been sold. "It's been the usual trend where in the beginning there's a lot of sales, then it tends to drop off a little bit, and now it's back up again," he said. "They're selling very well, but there are still tickets available don't give up." The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will be Formula One's first dusk-to-night race, starting at 5pm and running under floodlights until after dark. After from the grand prix, Yas Marina will host other motorsport events, including a race for Australia's V8 Supercars on February 18-20. [e-mail]