Day 45 - Race

Race day was meant to start with a midday boozy brunch at a nice hotel in the city centre. However, the effects of yesterday’s tiredness were still being felt this morning, leading Ben, Tom and I to ignore our alarm clocks and miss it, leaving Amar and Alice to stuff their faces while we went back to the cafe that supplied our breakfast on Thursday in search of the molten eggs with cheese (which really should be called molten cheese with eggs) that looked too good to miss out on when Amar had ordered them on our first visit. All three of us left thoroughly satisfied and headed to Orchard Rd, where Ben invested on another lens for his camera and I had to spend every ounce of my willpower not to do the same.

In the past nine editions of the Singapore Grand Prix it had never rained during a session — practice, qualifying or race. In the first four sessions of the tenth edition, that trend was maintained, despite plenty of showers and thunderstorms before and after running. The dark clouds covering the sky and the flashes of lightning not very far from the circuit made it very likely that history would be made, and sure enough it started raining reasonably heavily ten minutes before the formation lap. With a smile on my face from the fact that Max, who was due to start from P2 and had the inside line into Turn 1, is a well known wet-weather master, I made my way to the first corner with high hopes. These lasted about twenty seconds after the lights went out, at which point I could just about distinguish a red car (with a loosely attached wheel flying above the roll hoop) crashing into Max’s Red Bull, then taking out an orange car sneaking around the outside. Otherwise there was pretty much spray everywhere, making one wonder how on earth these guys manage to drive at 300kph in these conditions…

The rain quickly eased off and the rest of the race was mostly processional, with Lewis Hamilton’s pace (which was nowhere in qualifying) too much for Daniel Ricciardo in the sole surviving Red Bull. Going on track for the podium celebrations was a pretty sweaty affair, but worth it for the track walk that followed. While I am aware I have been raving about this circuit and its surroundings for three solid days here, it still felt pretty cool to walk along the bridge or the bay chicanes, especially after having been lucky enough to do the same in Monte Carlo with Tom a few months earlier. I can safely say this is the best Grand Prix I have ever been to, not only due to the track itself and the way it is set up (Calvin Harris put on a pretty good show after the race) but also due to the fact that the General Admission tickets allow you to pick out of a number of great spots around the track and also that you are surrounded  by one of the most vibrant cities in the World, offering pretty much everything from cheap street food joints to expensive nightclubs atop gigantic skyscrapers.

After five days in Singapore we were still missing a trip up the Marina Bay Sands hotel, the iconic three-towered building that you have probably seen a dozen of times in the skyline pictures scattered around this blog (I know, there are a few of them…). This was rectified as some recently-acquainted friends of ours managed to get us into “Cé La Vi”, which despite the bastardisation of the French language is a pretty cool club next to the hotel’s famous Infinity pool. The view was not quite as epic as the one from the top of One Raffles Place, but it certainly left you torn between enjoying the decent music on the dance floor and just vacantly staring at the immensity of the commercial district buildings one more (and eventually one last) time. There may have been a more perfect way to end the Singaporean part of this trip, but I sincerely doubt I would be able to afford the taxi to the airport after that…

Cheers,
J-Wowww