‘The idea of the Yas Marina Circuit is that we will be able to cater for all kinds of events, whether that be during the day or the evening. As we know, the summer here is very hot, so the only chance you get to run a motorsports event in those months is during the evenings or the nighttime. Effectively, what we have achieved is a circuit that can be used all year round for all sorts of activities. For example, we’re discussing at the moment about having a marathon and a triathlon event there.
‘We have a full plan for the whole season. Our target is to run the track for 300 days a year. Included in those 300 days is at least six to eight major events a year [the F1 race and all that surrounds it is just one event]. We’re now looking at various different stand-alone races such as GP2 Aussie V8s and the Le Mons series. There are lots of things we’re looking at for the moment and they will each have their own weekend of racing.
‘On top of that there are a lot of other activities. There’s the driving academy, there’s the drag strip and, the great thing is, we can run the circuit as two individual independent circuits with their own race controls, so it allows us to have a race on one part of the circuit and a race on the other part.
‘Our aim is to put Abu Dhabi on the world stage in terms of motorsport. There’s no better way of doing that than by using Formula One. You’re going out to a global audience of 600 million people every two weeks. This is integral to what we’re trying to do here in Abu Dhabi.’
