Day 43 - Practice

Last night's events led to a late start to the day, as even though we aimed to be up by 1pm we actually struggled to leave the house on time to make it to the start of free practice. In the end we made it just in time, stopping to talk to the NUS Formula SAE team as the first few install laps were going on.

The Singapore street circuit is a pretty incredible place to watch motor racing. The obvious lack of run-off areas puts the spectators incredibly close to the cars and, as you look around, you feel dwarfed by towering buildings and the Singapore Flyer, a huge Ferris wheel overlooking the start/finish straight. Despite the underwhelming noise and relatively low top speeds achieved in this twisty track, the cornering and braking performance are pretty impressive, with the (only slightly artificial) sparks coming off the back of the cars through the bumpy Turn 1 making it a nice show. The session ended with Daniel Ricciardo in P1 and Fernando Alonso in P8, making most of us pretty happy.

The Gardens by the Bay are a combination of natural and artificial trees located behind the iconic Marina Bay Sands hotel, which become illuminated in changing colours as the sun comes down behind the Singapore skyline. A peaceful and pleasant walk, which provided a welcome change of scenery from the loud and frantic concrete jungle surrounding the race track, it opened our appetite for dinner at the poetically-named Satay by the Bay, where the absurd amount of food that at one point covered our table was somehow devoured by the start of the second free practice session.

With Daniel on top once again followed by his teammate, boding well for Red Bull’s chances this weekend, and the McLarens a respectable 6-7, we headed to the OneRepublic concert at the main stage in the GP precinct. While none of us are exactly lifelong fans of the American band, everyone was pretty amused when the lead singer announced he was going to perform some songs he had written for other artists. He opened with "Halo" and everyone immediately realised why it was Beyoncé who turned it into a hit - as much as the guy tried, his voice did not have the power nor the range to do it justice, and his attempt at doing so travelled the road between inadequate and outright painful for what felt like a quarter of an hour. After a couple more songs, where the singer's shortfalls were not as evidently exposed, we decided to call it a day.

The walk between the Grand Prix venue and Clarke Quay continued the trend of pretty reflections of high-rise buildings on water, with the suffocating humid heat that had me struggling all day having eased off considerably by this point. A tower of Tiger wrapped up the cooling requirements for the evening, but we will definitely be back for some more sweaty motor racing tomorrow.

Cheers,
J-Wowww