The sixth Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will be held two Sundays hence.

It will be the second time the Formula One drivers’ champion will be decided in the UAE capital.

Which is the aim of any track that winds up with the final date on the F1 calendar. “All we want is the championship up in the air when they get to us.”

This is the third time Abu Dhabi has hosted the final F1 race, but Jenson Button had clinched before he got here in 2009 for the first Abu Dhabi GP. (At the time, we weren’t “fussed” because it was new. Abu Dhabi didn’t really need a championship struggle, too.)

That came a year later, in 2010, when four guys showed up in Abu Dhabi with a chance to win. It was fairly crazy, actually, and my recollection is that at some point any of the four guys would have been champions — had the race ended at a moment advantageous to them.

Fernando Alonso of Ferrari arrived with the points lead but lost it — and the championship — because of miscalculations by his crew, allowing Sebastian Vettel to win the first of his four successive world championships.

The title decided here … worked out for Abu Dhabi this year because Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, the Mercedes-GP drivers, have been so good that they have finished 1-2 nearly every race.

About all that changes is which guy is first and which is second. Hamilton has won 10 races, of the 18 contested so far, and Rosberg has won five. (Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull has won three.)

And it gets better … because Abu Dhabi is the first “double points” race in F1 history.

This was Bernie Ecclestone‘s idea. Double points. Bernie being the slippery and probably corrupt head of the sport.

His idea was to increase the chance of the championship coming down to the final race, as well as making it more likely whoever arrives as leader has to push harder to clinch the season title.

At the moment, the standings look like this:

1. Lewis Hamilton, 334 points

2. Nico Rosberg, 317 points

Under normal points distribution (25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1), the title would still be up in the air, but Hamilton would have been able to clinch by finishing sixth. Even if Rosberg won.

With double points in play, a Rosberg victory (worth 50 points) means Hamilton wins the championship only if he finishes second.

That should keep a fire lit under Hamilton. (And it was his coasting, most of the way, to a championship by finishing fifth in Brazil, in 2008, that apparently inspired Ecclestone to try the double-points thing, six years later.)

If Rosberg wins, and one of the other 16 cars expected to race here can sneak past Hamilton … then Rosberg is a champion, just like his father, Keke, was in 1982.

Double points has been derided as a gimmick that might take the championship from the man who deserves it.

All we know for sure, in Abu Dhabi, is that the race on November 23 figures to be a lot more interesting, from start to finish, than it would have been under the regular scoring system.

Double points? Great idea!