Monday, September 29, 2008

It’s not about the racing

The first F1 race in Singapore is over. The first night race in F1 history was incident packed as there were crashes and accidents all over the place. The safety car has to be activated twice during the race.

As expected, the race was won in the pits. Ferrari's Felipe Massa went from first to last after a pitstop blunder, while Renault's double world champion Fernando Alonso won his first race in more than a year sent him as he had made his pit-stop before the first safety car came out.

Image wise, the race is good for the image of Singapore. However, I think they must work on the race track before the race next year. First thing is how narrow the track was. Before the race, a driver said that Singapore will be a crash-fest. He wasn’t wrong. While I can remember all of 5 over-taking moves in the whole 55 lap race, there were just too many crashes, too many laps under the safety cars. It spoilt the race for me.

I also think they need to look into the heat of the race. When you see the drivers after the race, all of them were sweating like crazy and most looked shattered by the experience. They don’t look that bad even after the Malaysian F1 race which is held during the day-time. Maybe it’s the fact Singapore is a street circuit or it’s the heat from the floodlights, but I think that’s something that must be looked into before the next race.

There wasn’t much too crow about the racing but F1 Singapore was always more about selling Singapore than the racing itself. On that part, I believe F1 Singapore has to be counted as a successful

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