Abu Dhabi Grand Prix: F1 says goodbye to 2017, before it's halo to 2018

Abu Dhabi. The circuit which hosts the final grand prix of what’s been a long and utterly fascinating season.

Abu Dhabi. The circuit where, last season, Lewis Hamilton controversially won by driving as slowly as he could, in a cunning attempt to destroy team-mate Nico Rosberg’s race and snatch the title.

Abu Dhabi. The circuit in an Arab country where alcohol consumption is permitted, which is just as well because the track is a stinker and you’d be mad to come here just for the racing.

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What’s to play for?

Yes, the big prizes have already been claimed but there are still some scraps left on the F1 table.

For example, if Valtteri Bottas wins and Sebastian Vettel fails to score, then Bottas steals second place in the Drivers’ Championship, and Mercedes get a nice one-two. Calm yourself.

Kimi Raikkonen is only seven points adrift of Daniel Ricciardo in the battle for fourth place, so there’s interest there too; assuming there is actually such a thing as a battle for fourth place in F1.

Felipe Massa is only a couple of points ahead of his young Williams buddy Lance Stroll, and would doubtless like to still be ahead after his final race … ok, perhaps that’s not exactly a Dan Brown cliff-hanger but, y’know, Felipe’s last race.

Where there could be some action is in the Force India team, in which Sergio Perez is 11 points ahead of Esteban Ocon and the gloves are off since Force India have comfortably secured fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship, despite their drivers’ occasional forays into F1 cage-fighting.

And, if you’re interested, Haas, Renault and Toro Rosso are in a three-way race to finish sixth in the Constructors’ Championship, grabbing some welcome prize dollar in the process. Listen, you might not care right now but I guarantee the TV bods will be shouting about this at some point, because the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix has a habit of rationing F1 nuggets; you’ve been warned.

Proper talking points

We might get lucky with racing incidents – this is the season in which Vettel shunted Hamilton under Safety Car conditions remember – but, if Abu Dhabi serves up F1 fare which is a tad tepid, there are other things to discuss.

‘Halo’ head protection is coming next season and, while it may not be any uglier than the ‘shark’s fin’ ridges on F1 engine covers, it’s going to be a Marmite addition to car profiles.

Enjoy the pure, halo-free, profile while you can.

Talking of aesthetics, there’s a new F1 logo in the offing and you’re likely to see it at Abu Dhabi.

The current logo – the one with the ‘1’ in what designers call negative space – is iconic but, in case you hadn’t noticed, the sport has had new owners for a while now and they (Liberty Media) are keen to do that meddling thing.

Countless people failed to see the figure ‘1’ in the current logo and, anyway, it’s associated in many minds with the sport’s Ecclestone era, so it’s going to be sidelined.

That’s a bit of a shame – not because change is necessarily a bad thing, although I reckon the existing logo would be good for a few more laps with a bit of spit and polish – but because the new logo designs that have been registered look, how shall I say this politely, underwhelming.

Yes, underwhelming. That’s polite.

It’s like time travellers have arrived from the 1980s, with a freshly-unboxed Apple Macintosh but only QuarkXPress 1 running on the thing.

One logo looks like a broken Scalextric track, one looks like a shed in a storm and the third looks like it may have been modelled on Donald Trump’s hair. Two of them appear to use variants of Helvetica, because nothing says Cutting Edge Of Motorsport like the font from Ladybird books.

It’s not that I don’t understand why Liberty want to put their stamp – literally – on Formula 1.

It’s just that I’m properly jealous someone got paid to come up with these efforts: they should come with a Glenn Medeiros soundtrack.

If Liberty are trolling us, it’s working.

The racing, F1 fool, what about the racing?

The Yas Marina Circuit plays out thus: sectors one and two add up to two-and-a-half long straights and a sweeping curve, while sector three is what happens when a child plays with a set square, a whole bunch of right-angle corners that must have looked awesome on graph paper but offer little in the way of smiles for drivers or spectators.

Overtaking isn’t easy though, of course, DRS means Merc and Ferrari should dominate thanks to those straights, while the Red Bulls will claw back time in that Mickey Mouse third sector.

Keep your fingers crossed for end-of-season enthusiasm stirring things up a bit or, failing that, mechanical gremlins mixing up the grid as a bunch of cars at the end of their working lives get thrashed one last time.

Hamilton should walk this race – frankly, he could do with a bit of an image boost, since his tax affairs have become so notorious that he was even the target of a flaccid side-swipe during the Chancellor’s Budget speech. Ewww.

Lewis may like to come across all hip and cool but there’s nothing chilled about being mocked by the likes of Philip Hammond.

Perhaps he’ll do his utmost to help Bottas win, exorcising the ghosts of his gritty efforts to wreck Rosberg’s race at this circuit last year.

Perhaps he and Vettel will have one final duel, the race that we all hoped would decide the championship this season.

Perhaps Ferrari will have more miseries and Red Bull will snatch yet another podium.

However it plays out, it’s the last F1 race of the year, and that makes it significant on my calendar at least.

Here’s hoping it doesn’t disappoint. Too much.