Abu Dhabi  - Do you want to see the future of Formula 1? Then go to Abu Dhabi on November 1, and you will most likely see Bernie Ecclestone's dearest dream.

Ecclestone despises the "old order" embodied in Magny Cours, the Nuerburgring or Montreal and enjoys much more the sophisticated projects in new markets like Singapore, Bahrain, Malaysia, Shanghai or the United Arab Emirates.

"The fact that you have the track on an island, with its own marina and hotel, is something unique. Monaco comes to mind, but the fact that this has been created here in Abu Dhabi makes it unique," Richard Cregan told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Cregan was for years a top official at Toyota and since late 2008 he is the "number two" at the astonishing project in the emirate.

Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is made up of 200 islands. One of them, called Yas, now holds over 35,000 workers, mostly Indians and Pakistanis, who move around within a cloud of dust in an arid landscape from which concrete forms emerge, as yet far from their definitive look.

By October at the latest, the site should be a garden. The turquoise water of the Arabian Gulf should provide a marina and generate the environment that emerged from the imagination of Philippe Gurdjian - a Frenchman with over four decades in the world of motorsport who linked up with the government of Abu Dhabi to offer an unprecedented experience for Formula One.

"All the grandstands are covered, the pit exit is a tunnel, one of the corners goes underneath the grandstand," Cregan explained enthusiastically. "You can also run two different circuits, two races at the same time. There's a lot of features there. In 2011, with everything on the run, we'll have an amazing facility."

Cregan is probably not exaggerating. The Yas Marina Hotel is set to be the only one in the world with a Formula One track running through it.

The Sun Tower, covered in solar panels, is set to offer a VIP hall 60 metres above ground for its most distinguished visitors, some of whom are set to arrive from Europe aboard yachts that are up to 100 metres long.

Abu Dhabi has signed a deal to host a Formula One Grand Prix for seven years. The capital of the United Arab Emirates thus goes a step further in its attempt to differentiate itself from its at times extravagant neighbour Dubai.

The over 800-metre-tall skyscrapers that emerge 120 kilometres away are matched by Abu Dhabi's subsidiaries of La Sorbonne or the Louvre Museum and its own Guggenheim Museum. Abu Dhabi counters Dubai's traffic-jammed streets with a seafront (Corniche) that is many kilometres long.

How much does the Yas island circuit cost? Officials take care not to give away a figure, they just note that it is in line with top sports venues like the new Wembley stadium in London or Yankee Stadium in New York.

According to the specialist magazine F1 Racing, the cost will be around 1.4 billion dollars, including some 25 million hours of work and 140,000 cubic metres of cement.

Until now, tracks used to be made for drivers, while this one was designed for spectators, Gurdjian was quoted by the magazine as saying. Cregan, however, thinks drivers will enjoy Abu Dhabi's like few other Grand Prix.

"You basically combine very, very fast sections with tight sections as well," he noted. "You wouldn't see anywhere the change of altitude we have, the 10- or 15-metre difference on the track. The down to the north is quite amazing. If you stand on top and look down, or from the north stand and look back, that's quite amazing."

"For the drivers you have a lot of features there. In a lot of tracks they have the start and finish line, and that's it. Here there is a constant change in the scenery, a combination of Spa, Monaco, Monza. I hope they find it very challenging," Cregan said.

Abu Dhabi is a newcomer in the F1 calendar, although the highest category in motorsport already has a history in the United Arab Emirates.

In 1981 Dubai hosted a dusty demonstration Grand Prix on a track by the sea. Things did not quite go well: a car was damaged as it fell from the helicopter that was carrying it, while Argentine driver Juan Manuel Fangio suffered heart problems after a demonstration run on the Mercedes W196 that he had driven to win the 1955 world championship.

But that is all too far away. The future lies in Abu Dhabi, and the city is not scared of the ongoing global economic crisis.

"The budget is sufficient to deliver a very good product, we have the resources," Cregan noted.

He added, however, that they have no "open cheque" and never had such a thing in the past either.

Abu Dhabi officials hope that the race, the last in the F1 season, will be as lucky as the Brazilian GP was in 2008, by getting to close the season with a nailbiting race that remained uncertain until the last lap.

"The main thing here is that on November 1st we'll have a race here. Whether it's the deciding one for the championship or not, nobody would love it more than myself," Cregan said. "I think that this year it will be very close, as last year."

He is visibly proud of the Abu Dhabi effort many months before the race.

"The whole Formula One business was changing already before the crisis. Formula One is moving into new areas: India, here, South Africa," he said. "And this is a milestone, no doubt. The facility itself will be up there with the best."

For the future, Cregan holds the possibility of making this a night-time Grand Prix.

"The fact that we can run the track 24 hours a day leaves us in a very good position to run the circuit at night-time. There are a lot of possibilities," he admitted. (dpa)