BRANDS HATCH has not seen anything like it since the glory days of the 1980s when Nigel Mansell won his first Grand Prix.

The helicopters were queuing up to land trackside yesterday, the pit girls squeezed into their lycra hotpants and the racing cars spun around Paddock Hill Bend during qualifying.

At lunchtime today, A1 racing, the first challenge to Bernie Ecclestone’s Formula 1 empire, will get under way with the opening event in a series of 12 races worldwide.

To most of the 80,000 petrolheads who will fill the stands at the Kent circuit, A1 is another reason to spend Sunday afternoons watching cars whizzing round in circles. But to one group of spectators, it is much, much more.

Watching the race from his private box at Brands Hatch will be Sheikh Maktoum Hasher Maktoum al Maktoum and a dozen members of the ruling Maktoum family of Dubai.

The £100m motorsport competition is the centrepiece of the Maktoums’ latest multi-billion- pound business venture. Thirty years after they emerged as a new force in horseracing, the Middle Eastern oil sheikhs are embarking on an audacious bid to buy their way into the £50 billion global sports business. A1 is one of several new large investments that the Dubai royal family is making in almost every aspect of British sport.

Despite the Ashes victory, Lords is a little less like the home of cricket these days. The International Cricket Council (ICC), the sport’s governing body, left its 96-year-old London home last month and moved to new headquarters — in Dubai.

Meanwhile, Arsenal fans are looking forward to the opening of the team’s new stadium, Ashburton Grove, which will have the giant red Emirates airline logo on the stands. The Dubai airline, controlled by the country’s royal family, has paid most of the £90m bill for the new ground, known as the Emirates Stadium. In return the Maktoums get a huge presence at the stadium — nicknamed Dubaibury — and an agreement that Arsenal players will play exhibition matches in Dubai.

Arsenal’s great rivals, Manchester United, are also benefiting from the oil-fuelled sporting spending spree.

Officials at Old Trafford recently signed a £25m licensing deal, which will lead to the first Manchester United Soccer School in the Middle East opening in Dubai in 2009.

“Dubai is breaking new ground by buying into almost every sport in Britain,” said Kevin Roberts, editor of Sport Business International magazine. “The Maktoums are determined to attract stars to major events, while providing the financial environment that will attract the federations who govern world sport to Dubai.”

The emirate is using its trump card — an oil-rich, tax-free economy — to lure sportsmen and investors to its Middle Eastern playing field of dreams.

“What Dubai does not have it simply buys. Money talks and Dubai is shouting,” said Ugi Balasubramaniam, a leading Dubai-based sports official.

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