Formula One Night Race 2012 in Singapore!

I was really lucky to have won tickets to the Formula One this year. Granted it’s just the practice session, but the cars are the same, the VROOOMs are the same, and to be honest I’m most curious about what it’s like to be there on the track itself – mainly because I don’t follow F1.

I was lucky as I won’t be participating in the ballot next year, and also because if I hadn’t fallen sick I’ll be in Guangxi, China at the moment with only Sunday’s tickets to ballot for (and a lesser quantity available than today as well). It’s also the reason why these pictures aren’t on Facebook – out of consideration for my colleague (and boss) who had to do my work instead cos I wasn’t well to travel :S

I went with my mum for the first practice session – ironically it’s not “night” yet:

The skyline of Singapore is beautiful from the Bay Grandstand, with a gorgeous view of Marina Bay. It had poured earlier in the afternoon and threatened to rain still:

The cars are all a blur from where we were. Actually our seats were for much higher up, but there were so many empty seats available so we just plonked ourselves down. We are also not allowed to stand near the railings to take photos, and the ushers have to constantly remind people to return to their seats:

Red Bull is easy to spot:

It’s obvious why people aren’t allowed at the railings when you’re trying to take pictures from your seat, but it’s really annoying when you want a good shot!

The view of the background got much better as the sky darkened:

I managed to get shots with cars in them too :)

I hated this red ribbon barrier, had no idea what it was for and tried but failed to take the section of that band off:

I managed to take a long video with quite a lot of the cars, to hear the VROOOOM. The engines were very loud (deafeningly so if you were next to the barriers), but the foam ear plugs we bought onsite were of some help. Ear plugs are a MUST.

I pity those crew right next to the track. I hope they have industrial strength ear protection, though it seems like not all of them do. Just walking down to the exit resulted in literally ringing ear drums as the cars went past:

I got restless and took short walk to the edge of the stand – so gorgeous from here, with a view of another very empty stand:

Compare the number of people there to mine, which got increasingly crowded as the evening wore on:

A look at one of the merchandise booths:

We ambled over to the walkabout section, where I took this shorter video:

We left shortly after, as we had enough of vroom vrooms and neither of us were that keen on the fringe entertainment events. Besides, I didn’t have much sleep last night and was rather tired by then.

And a parting shot:

My Formula One curiosity sated :)

Along the Singapore River

The Singapore River is the most beautiful place to be at night in Singapore. They’ve made it even prettier of late, with additional lights on the various bridges along the river.

The boy took lots of photos by mounting his dslr on a Gorilla Tripod, which begot great pictures like this one:

Having on such tripod, i placed my camera on the parapet on timer mode and got these:

Litter blocking the view! They turned out rather well though, but I preferred not to have trash in view.

The good thing about having a slim camera like my Fuji Finepix J10 is that it was slim enough to fit on the barriers along the river. So I placed it there – out of the way of litter – and got the following:

The photos are still kinda dark, but i really liked the streaks from the bumboats that went past:

The Fullerton Hotel is simply gorgeous..

Naturally, my low-end camera wasn’t the one that took these pictures:

This was actually an accident, a result of the Gorilla Tripod slipping downwards while trying to take a picture:

I also didn’t manage to get any shots of these Ferraris parked at the Fullerton – all belonging to a racing group, as they had similar ‘badges’ on their bonnets:

I believe these – or at least the last one – were taken on a longer shutter speed. Just look at how much light was captured!