Formula 1's Chinese breakthrough

Judging by first impressions from the lucky few who have already visited the Shanghai venue, the answer is going to be pretty special. No two men are better qualified to comment than BAR duo Anthony Davidson and Jenson Button, who took a look at the track earlier this year as it was nearing completion.

And although there is an almost 45-minute drive along the highway out of Shanghai city centre before reaching the circuit, Davidson believes anyone making the journey will be well rewarded.

"The circuit is the biggest complex by miles that you see there, so it will attract all the locals," he says. "Some of them may not know what is going on, but they will come along anyway because of the scale of the place. I think it is going to be quite popular.

"On your first approach to the track you see the massive grandstand covers and the media centre. There is silver everywhere and it is like a huge spaceship has landed on the pit straight. The paddock is big and nicely spread out with the engineer rooms on pillars on a lake. Jenson has said it will be great if there are loads of mosquitoes. So if people are getting bitten to death by the end of the week then we know where it has come from!"

Davidson and Button have not had the luxury of driving their BAR cars around the circuit yet, but even in the few laps they have completed in roads cars they are convinced that the Shanghai circuit has plenty of potential.

"The track itself is fantastic," explains Button. "The facilities are staggering and when you walk into the circuit and look up at the media circuit it is just out of this world. From looking at the layout there are probably four overtaking places, so it's pretty good. But it may be a different story when we get there."

Davidson concurs that the layout does offer some good overtaking opportunities, but he wants to leave his final verdict until he is out on the track.

"It is really wide, smooth and quite undulating for such a new circuit. There is a bit of camber on some corners and the kerbs are really good. The back straight is massively long and the hairpin at the end of it is really tight, so hopefully there will be some overtaking there.

"There are also some long winding corners like Club at Silverstone going onto the back straight, so hopefully coming out of there you can get quite close to someone if you have got good traction - so you can have a good old lunge at the end of the hairpin.

"It will be important on Friday to get as much running as possible, but I think it's too early to say yet whether the layout is better than Bahrain. I would probably say it is not as good as Sepang, but it should be quite interesting with lots of double-apex corners."

Much of the focus for fans and drivers will be on the ultra-tight Turn One. Quite similar to the first corner at Sepang, it is a long tightening right-hander, which plunges downhill into an even tighter left-hand bend. Davidson has likened the elevation change to that at the famous Corkscrew at Laguna Seca. Expect trouble there on Sunday afternoon - and a difficult learning process for the drivers.

Button is not pretending that it is going to be easy. "Turn One is going to be tough," he claims. "You are going to get a lot of understeer there and lot of graining of the tyres. But it will be quite nice as you hit the apex and drop down to the left.

"I think you are going to have to hit the brake before you turn in there, initially just dabbing the brake, but it will be weird because of the final apex right at the end. You will probably hit the first apex and initially touch the kerb a third of the way through the corner and then go out slowly to the middle of the circuit before coming back for the final apex. It's going to be pretty neat."

The F1 world is waiting now with eager anticipation. All the indications are that China is not going to disappoint.