Formula One in the Sandlands

The racing on Yas Island had, for a Grand Prix fan, its motorsport moments. And I have been a regular viewer of the F1 coverage delivered by the German RTL network from Schummi's earliest days. But to see the event in the context of a city which still evokes for me vestiges of Heimatgefühl was awesome.

When Sheikh Hazza bis Zayed al Nahyan, upon whose instructions we created and launched the GearOne automotive television channel in 2005, presented the trophy to the German winner, Sebastian Vettel, I do believe I had a tear of crazily mixed emotions in the corner of one eye.



One of the many celebrity visitors was the Jamiroquai singer JayKay. The Brit who fronted the group for its Grand Prix warm-up concert noted with sadness how the futuristic Yas Island circuit compared with the venerable old-school but terribly tawdry Silverstone race track. I was hard put to imagine a liveried British Airways cheekily buzzing the Northamptonshire circuit at about three hundred feet. Okay, the Etihad jet wasn't an A380, but bravo anyway!

Grapeshisha has a great backgrounder here, including a well executed virtual lap of the track.