The news is out. Singapore will stage a Formula One Grand Prix next year, with the race set to be the first night race in the F1's history. More importantly, it will be on a street circuit around the Marina Bay district. The first race will be in either September or early October 2008.
I don't care if the race will bring in 120 million dollars per year; I don't care if 100,000 people will come to Singapore due to the race; I don't even care that the Singapore Tourism Board had evaluated the event and deemed it "worthy" of the government's support, but you cannot hold the race at the Marina Bay site!
Can you just think of that location with all traffic cut off for at least a month? It's not just the race itself, before that the teams will have to test the track, get everything ready and they will have to test both in day-time and night-time. That means that the whole Marina area will have to be cut off from traffic for a month, at least. That's not even counting the countless roadworks that will have to take place before the race itself.
There's also the lights issue. When Red Bull driver Mark Webber came to test run the track (in the day I might add) a few months ago, he said that F1 cars do not have lights and so the circuit would have to be brilliantly lit for visibility purposes. He means floodlights, people. The normal lights we have now will not be enough, especially if it rain. Going over 300km/h in the rain at night with the lamp-posts we have now? Not for me.
We have a lot of work to do. So why not either move the track to another location or built a race track? Either option will be better than to have the race in Marina. I have a headache just thinking of the traffic jam it will cause. Move the location.
1 comment:
Have a little bit more faith in the Singapore government; where monetary gains and being 1st in the world in any matter is concerned, they'll spare nothing to attain the goals. It has always been so, and it will continue to be so, ya?
After all, where in the world is there a democratic nation where a bill is first passed and then later debated in the parliament? It's like what the locals used to say: taking off the trousers just to fart (something like that).
It's unfortunate, but sometimes we just gotta live with what we cannot change.
Sigh... shikata ga nai ne!
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