It’s always interesting to watch teams and drivers getting to grips with a new circuit, and the team that appeared to do the best job of it in Abu Dhabi on Friday was McLaren, which was fastest in both sessions.
James Allen expects newly liberated world champion Jenson Button and Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel to give Lewis Hamilton a strong run for his money this weekend, but suggests that the McLaren driver may have the trump card in the form of KERS on this stop-start track.
Today was quite a special day, with the first laps on a hotly anticipated new circuit.
It was also the first time since the end of the 2004 season when we have been at a grand prix meeting with nothing hanging on it championship-wise.
History will show that it was Jaime Alguersuari who set the first complete F1 lap time of Yas Marina Circuit, a 1m50s, but by the end of the day the times had dropped to 1m41s and they have further to go.
The track rubbered in a lot as the day went on and there will be increasing levels of grip as the weekend progresses.
Being in the desert there is a lot of dust around and with quite a strong wind coming off the water, it moves more dust onto the track.
Although there are barriers close to the circuit in many places, most drivers do not seem to think that we will see a lot of mistakes during the race.
There are quite a few places where an accident would bring out the safety car, so we will see.
Physically this track is easy on the drivers, despite the heat, so fatigue will not be a problem, as it is in Singapore for example. It is also pretty wide.
Most of the mistakes which were made today happened at turn eight, which is the corner at the end of the long straight where drivers were getting their braking wrong.
From what we saw today, it looks to me as though the win will be fought out between Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel.
All three have competitive cars and seem to have a small edge over their team-mates.
Hamilton’s McLaren looks very fast indeed. He loves tracks where he can float out close to the walls, like Monaco and Montreal, and he had the car dialled in very quickly today. With reasonable fuel levels and no tricks he was always quick.
Button had a few off-track excursions but he too was on it all day, driving with a freedom we haven’t seen for a while.
He really did get pretty nervous in the second half of the season – as he now freely admits – and with the championship now over he is driving for pleasure.
I think we will see a great race between those three.
Hamilton’s big advantage is the KERS. He uses half of it on the first part of the 1.2km straight, a quarter on the back straight out of turn nine, and then a dab coming onto the pit straight.
Like Bahrain, it will make him hard to pass if he starts ahead of the Brawn or the Red Bull.
The run to turn one isn’t very long so I’m not sure how much of a help KERS will be there, perhaps enough to make up a place.
McLaren are in far better shape than Ferrari, who look likely to lose out in the battle for third place in the constructors’ championship to McLaren.
They are a point behind already and, with Hamilton on race-winning form, I think it’s all over in that battle.