Race of Champions moves to Bird's Nest in Beijing

This year's Race Of Champions will take place in the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing, China. Earlier this month, the organisers of the event already declared that they would be moving from the London Wembley stadium in the UK, but nobody expected that the event would take place in Asia.

Li Jianyi General Manager of Great Gate, the company running the Bird's Nest, said: "Following last year's Olympics, we now possess one of the world's best sporting stadia. We are very excited about The Race of Champions coming. The stadium has already seen the world's fastest athletes, and now it will see the world's fastest racers."

Frederik Johnsson, President of IMP event organisers, said: "I would like to say thank you to Wembley for the past two years. The people there were great to work with and helped us put on two fantastic events. This year will be the Race of Champions' first year outside of Europe, but we will definitely be back soon."

Additionally to the new venue, the event will be held in the middle of the week instead of in the weekend, and just two days after the F1 season comes to a close at Abu Dhabi.

The 2009 event will run over two days, the first day on Tuesday, 3 November, staging the Nations Cup and the Race of Champions will be held on the following day.