By: Calvin Fisher

Formula One, It's not as loud as you think, you know? It is in fact far, far louder. I'm perched at turn ten of the Yas Marina Grand Prix circuit, that’s the south side chicane of the decadent Abu Dhabi venue. It’s in the middle of winter so the temperature is a mere 32 degrees Celsius and the skies are as clear as crystal. It’s like any other racing circuit you’ve been to only bigger, cleaner, with bits that look as though they’ve been dipped in gold. It’s all a bit Pixar. This is a playground for the very very well off.

It takes me over an hour to notice that the opulent high-rise apartment ‘buildings’ across from me are floating… because they are in fact yachts! Helicopters dart in and out carting the kinds of people who wear Armani and Gucci apparel only because there isn’t anything more expensive yet. I’m talking about the types who have never seen an ATM in their lives nor any clue on how or why they function. It’s here that an army of V8 formula racers representing both the pinnacle of motorsport and a ‘Best Of’ collection from the world of aeronautics thanks to a wealth of down-force accruements inducing lift and drag, are barrelling through the esses. They converge on top of each other and side by side as if passing through a funnel. The sun glints off their carbon fibre bodywork and goes haywire when it comes into contact with anything metal. It’s a breath taking sight, and so damned loud. The smell of burnt jet fuel merges with that of my hot dog. Fantastic.

This is still the warm-up lap. It’s a melancholy affair wherein these steeds are braked and revved lethargically by their drivers with just enough muster to keep them on the boil. I’ve been warned to pop in a pair of ear plugs by my peers as the noise can quickly become unbearable. Now, I come from the world of modified cars for heaven’s sake! Stainless steel exhausts, wild camshafts, dumping turbo valves and of course multiple 15-inch subwoofers pumping all manners of bass lines and accompanied by ear-piercing treble emanating from malicious tweeters – so, I rationalised, I would be fine. Also I never brought any ear plugs along.

And then it began. The start line was not visible from our vista, but a massive screen showed the lights go green. Not that the visual aid was necessary because when 22 formula cars are launched off the line everyone within a billion kilometres knows it! The stands shake, your ears sting, and the anticipation is replaced with anxiety as you start calculating the distance and time it will take before the cars get to us. That’s when half the crowd stood up and let out an emotion-filled “Ooooooooh!”

What? Despite a clean launch, Vettel who had been on pole lost the lead on turn two when his car pitched sideways and spun off with a right rear tyre puncture. The young German was out of the race! Oh no! Our only view of the World Champion would be of him loping past us in a three-wheeled Red Bull racer, but not before the rest of the field has gotten through. This was lap one at last and a hard-charging Lewis Hamilton was leading the Grand Prix with a defiant Fernando Alonso shadowing him. Both cars twist manically through the chicane as sixteen cylinders trumpet the intent of the Brit and Spaniard. I immediately grab the earphones from my iPod and pop them in for some relief. Forget that pure eight-cylinder scream and succinct gear changes you experience on the telly. Unfiltered by Bernie's best sound engineers and un-muted by your tragically incapable home sound system, the noises expelled from these rockets on wheels are raucous, guttural, violent even, and I must have been less than fifty metres from it. Elsewhere, Sebastian Vettel has pitted for the last time with suspension failure.

It’s not just the volume either. When the drivers jump off the throttle when the yellow flag went up you can actually feel the back pressure from the overrun pound your ear drums, no doubt aided by this year’s ‘cold-blowing’ exhausts. While the noise gets you, it’s the speed that we’ve come here to witness and since we’re seated at the end of a long straight we are not disappointed.

It’s the most curious display. A lightning fast red blur approaches. Its engine wails as its driver shifts down, then again and again until the blur takes form, “It’s a Ferrari!” and dives (now as a solid) into a left turn, then a right, followed by another left. The Ferrari driver boots the throttle out the other end and in the distance it is transformed once again into an amorphous blur. Next up is a silver blur and a blue blur, then a blueish red blur and finally a green blur! And that is the Abu Dhabi Formula One sussed, really, just a series of blurs becoming cars and then blurs once again for 55 laps with the sun at some point being replaced by a moon transforming Yas Marina into a night race. And Lewis Hamilton won. Remarkable.

Calvin reckons becoming a motoring journo is an even cheaper way to get to the F1 than Dieter Rencken’s method on page XX but we still suggest the latter