What is better for F1 in Middle East? A Red Bull victory? A Ferrari victory? Or a Vodafone McLaren victory?

The German Red Bull F1 driver Sebastian Vettel managed to clinch his first F1 World Championship title last Sunday (14.11.2010) at the last race of the 2010 F1 season, which took place at the 1-year old but still breath-taking Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

Sebastian Vettel managed to seal the F1 title to his benefit ahead of Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and his Red Bull team-mate Marc Webber, who both had better chances and more points before the race started. Vodafone McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton also had a tiny mathematical chance of winning the title, but would have needed a miracle kicking the other three title contender out of the race or out of the points.

Fernando Alonso would have needed only to finish at 4th position and the 2010 F1 title would have been his, and he would have become the new F1 god not only in Maranello, but all-over Italy.

But Ferrari ran out of luck and somehow also out of good racing strategies in Abu Dhabi, which some insiders now call the new �Ferrari-Land’ because of the huge Ferrari World Theme Park next to the Yas Marina Circuit.

Sebastian Vettel managed to stay ahead of all other F1 drivers from the first meter till the last one of the race, while Fernando Alonso only finished on 7th position, Webber on 8th position and Hamilton on 2nd position.

So, how will this impressive Red Bull victory affect the Formula 1 media and public awareness in the Middle East region?

Will it be more helpful and beneficial to the standing of F1 in the Middle East than in a case of a Ferrari- or Vodafone McLaren-victory?

And how is the official and non-official TV and print coverage about F1 in the Middle East and North Africa region doing since 2004?

Do they attract more viewers and readers to F1 or do they make them turn away from F1?

And how is the perception and acceptance of motorsport in general and Formula 1 in specific in the Middle East and North Africa region, after seven F1 races held in Manama at the Bahrain International Circuit BIC and two F1 races held at the hyper-modern Yas Marina Circuit YMC in Abu Dhabi?

Does the visit of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad El Hariri and the Egyptian high-profile politician Gamal Moubarak (and who is also son of Egyptian president Mohamed Hosni Moubarak) to the 2010 Abu Dhabi F1GP mean that we might have a Formula One race circuit or a F1 race soon in Beirut or in the Egyptian capital Cairo?

And last but surely not least, how does F1-Boss Bernie Ecclestone, also known as Mr. E, think about the whole situation of F1 in the Middle East so far?

Read the answers to all these questions and more in the most-comprehensive, the most-honest, the most-straightforward and the most unrevealing report about F1, motorsport and its media, ever published in the Middle East and North Africa. Soon here on autoarabia.org

MS