Nobody does it better

I have been attending Formula One races for longer than I would care to admit; but I will admit to chatting with Graham Hill in the Brands Hatch paddock several lifetimes ago. You could do that in those days, but nowadays the most you will see of a driver is his helmet; given the pressures that hundreds of millions of dollars of sponsorship has brought.

Formula One may be run in a much more professional, and thankfully safer, way than it used to be; but the facilities for spectators have been much slower in catching up. Worst culprit in my experience was Spa in Belgium. The car park was a muddy field which had recently been inhabited by cows with a stomach complaint, staffed by mafia men who extracted large amounts of cash to let you wade through cow shit for several kilometres before arriving at the trackside which was equally muddy but slightly less shitty. God help you if you wanted the toilet in a rush, because there was always a long queue to enter the non-flushing portakabin which had apparently been soaked in urine for a week to impart a particularly tangy aroma. And you would never, ever, consider sitting down to do what the cows had been doing copiously in the previous weeks. Now wash your hands? Where? No running water.

Time for some food then. To a stall, also run by the mafia where you would queue for an hour before handing over a week’s salary for a hot slightly warm on the outside but cold in the middle dog, slammed into some stale bread and garnished with watered-down ketchup to hide the revolting taste of the food and the suspicious aroma lingering on your fingers after that trip to the urine infested shack.

Ablutions and eating complete, you can relax and enjoy the day. Except nothing much happens. A minor support race if you are lucky, and then the inevitable fly by of some crappy fighter painted in national colours which lasts precisely four seconds, “gosh, that was so loud. And so boring.” So instead you sit in mud, aching for a shit, and grit your teeth throughout the Grand Prix before making a dash to the muddy field and queueing for several hours to escape what may be the world’s greatest race track, but the world’s worst facilities. But it doesn’t really matter because you have spent two hours watching Nigel Mansell arriving sideways into Les Combes on every lap and you will never forget the experience; as I haven’t.

But now Singapore. I know there are other street circuits, but you have to admire the courage required to build a racetrack in the heart of a hotel/shopping mall district, and do it in a way such that everything around the track continues to function. And it all looks so damn good. The track itself is, out of necessity, a snaking cake of fencing and clever stuff for cars to bounce off when it all goes wrong. But around the track there are lanterns and flowers and decorations that will presumably have already been ripped down; but they give the place an atmosphere of permanence and charm; with the Singapore skyline as a backdrop.

The track goes across this flower lined bridge, with the 3 million watt lighting system overhead which must make for a hell of an electricity bill.

Tickets for the Singapore GP are significantly more expensive than those for the Malaysian GP; but you do get a much smarter set of tickets. A separate plastic ticket for each day of the event, with a heavily chromed clip and sturdy lanyard for each, all bundled up in a presentation box. Nice.

The instructions told us that we should get to the circuit by taking the MRT to a choice of stations and then getting a shuttle bus. A shuttle bus…? Those mystical devices that rarely arrive, and if they do they leave you stranded in strange places? Well of course not, this is Singapore. Out of the MRT, walk onto a bus, and five minutes later you are at the track. When you leave, same thing in reverse. On Sunday night after the race we left our grandstand along with a zillion other people, walked straight onto a bus, straight into an MRT train, and in only twenty minutes from standing up from our seats, we were making friends with this in the centre of town.

Transport solved, but what to do after you have entered the circuit?

This was the schedule for Saturday:

The red highlighted items happened on the track, the rest of the attractions were various events at the “F1 Villages” dotted around the track. If you were unlucky you could be subjected to the Backstreet Boys. We raided one of the many restaurants at the track on the evening of the race and acquired some rather tasty chicken tikka wraps which we consumed by while watching Travis, who were not as bad as I expected them to be.

On the Saturday night there was also a large concert with the likes of Beyonce, No Doubt and for those who like beards, ZZ Top.

As for the racing; well a street circuit is always going provide an even more processional race than an ordinary track. But at least you can get up close enough to realise that the drivers are all slightly mad; with Hamilton, both the Red Bull drivers and Alonso standing out as being particularly committed. And the noise is glorious.

Singapore can be proud of what it has achieved with their Formula One event. But the toilets are still a little suspect.