"Night Shift" - Commodores, 1986

Today's Formula One race in Singapore was an exciting first - the first night race!

The photo on the left, by the way, is my friend Vince from Singapore, who got to attend a practice session. Lucky Vince!

To those of us watching from home, the setup of the course looked a little treacherous. Besides the bumps that come from using city streets for an F1 course, there was that awkward location of the entrance to the pit lane.

Although our personal favorite - Lewis Hamilton - didn't win, at least he "podiumed" (a newly-coined verb). Massa had a difficult struggle with his fueling hose. But no one (as far as I've heard so far, anyway) has blamed anything bad on the lack of natural daylight.

Singapore obviously went all out to make the event a success, as the people of Singapore are certainly capable of doing. And the lighting was spectacular. But...

John and I agreed that we just didn't enjoy the event as much as we'd anticipated. Perhaps it is because, for us at home, our view seemed really restricted. We never got to see any aerial views, so we didn't have a lot of perspective for what we were seeing. We saw only bits and pieces of the course (much like the spectators there) and never had a feeling of how the various parts of the course were connected. I just don't think that the "night race" idea is very TV friendly. The cameras seemed to have a bit of trouble adjusting to the intensity of the lighting.

Still, it was quite an event...and well worth 2+ hours of our time yesterday afternoon!

I have always had a real fondness for street courses. Who couldn't enjoy the Monoco Grand Prix, with its incredible scenery! And I got to go to a US Grand Prix race in Detroit back in the 1980s, as I was working for one of the sponsors (Elf - the French oil company). That was a terrific experience...although I don't think that my hearing has never been the same since!

Janet