Wednesday, September 29, 2010

No More Please

With the exit of Max Mosley, Bernie Ecclestone is the person in sole charge of Formula One. One of the first things he said after the Singapore Grand Prix is that Singapore could staged F1 for the next 20 years.

For the stake of all concern, I hope not.

After the end of the Singapore Grand Prix last week, I decided to wait for the podium presentation. Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel were the top 3 finishers and as the camera showed them waiting in a small room for the podium presentation, you can just see how tired they were. Teammates Webber and Vettel shared a handshake and just fell into their chairs. Alonso had a bottle of water and instead of drinking it, he poured it over his head.

All 3 drivers were so tired and hot that they looked like they had been in a sauna!

Since the first year, drivers had complained about the Marina track. The complains ranged from it being humid, hot, bumpy, to the track being “challenging.” And that’s just from the drivers! Singaporeans raged against the roadblocks; shop-owners along the circuit complained about loss of business due to the roadblocks; and it is believed that Singapore had been losing money on the race since year one. It was no surprise when Singapore’s Minister of Trade and Industry S. Iswaran refused to confirm that Singapore is thinking of extending the race beyond the current contract.

Frankly, I’m all for a Singapore F1 race but I hate the Marina track. It sucks! If Singapore wants to hold an F1 event, we need to build a proper racing track! However that doesn’t seem likely so when the current F1 contract runs out in 2012, here is one Singaporean and racing fan that hopes it will not return.

No comments: