Yas Marina Circuit

Race track

Yas Marina's Twilight Finale

Built on Abu Dhabi's Yas Island for 2009, Yas Marina has become the place where the Formula 1 year usually comes to rest.

Yas Marina Circuit fills part of Yas Island, a headland in Abu Dhabi that a canal cuts off from the mainland, which makes it an island by engineering if not by birth. Hermann Tilke designed the circuit. Ground was broken in May 2007, and it opened in October 2009 in time for the first Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Its floodlights make up the largest permanent lighting installation at any sports venue in the world.

The setting is the point. The track follows the marina and passes beneath the W Abu Dhabi hotel and its glowing facade, and even the pit exit is unusual, ducking through a tunnel under the racing line. The surface is made with graywacke aggregate shipped from a quarry in Shropshire, England, which offers plenty of grip and collects its fee in tire wear. Drivers liked the variety of corners at the first race, but as the years went by the racing was criticized for offering too little overtaking.

That criticism brought change. For 2021 a tight run of turns early in the lap gave way to a single, gentler hairpin, a later cluster of corners became a sweeping banked curve, and further corners were opened up, cutting the Grand Prix layout from 5.554 km to 5.281 km.

Abu Dhabi has closed the season every year since 2009 apart from 2011 to 2013, and it held 17 championship rounds from 2009 to 2025. Sebastian Vettel won the first race and came back in 2010 to win again on the day he became champion. Nico Rosberg clinched the 2016 title here although Lewis Hamilton won the race, and in 2021 Max Verstappen took both race and championship. Hamilton and Verstappen share the record with five wins apiece, and Verstappen won the latest edition in 2025.

Under its lights, with the year's final points on the table, Yas Marina has become the sport's habitual last word.

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