Grand Prix 2022 Singapore Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

"Starry, starry night", sang Don Maclean in the song Vincent. He clearly wasn't standing next to the F1 circuit in Singapore when he came up with these lyrics as he would have been able to see bugger all of the night sky with all the extra lighting put in place to illuminate the race track.

Mr Google tells me there at 1,600 custom made lights around the circuit "specially designed to minimise glare and surface reflection". Now I'm not a lighting technician but in all the years I've been driving I will admit that reflection off of tarmac has never been a major concern to me. But what do I know? I suppose if it rains there could be a problem, but then if it rains the field follow the safety car round until Max Verstappen is declared the winner and then they all go home.

Apparently the lighting level is four times that of a football stadium and 100 times that of the street lights the rest of us mugs have to put up with when driving our cars on the road. All these lights are powered by 24 500kVA generators, which builds in multiple levels of redundancy, and there are a further 12 50kVA generators to supply power to all the track side services the teams need. Good old diesel generators! Don't worry, they planted a tree to offset the CO2 emissions. Yes, just the one.

Here's an interesting fact, when the FIA were running tests on the lighting they were helped by the Renault F1 team and their then test driver Nelson Piquet jnr. Perhaps this was what gave him the confidence to hit the wall at high speed in 2009 and know the marshals etc. would be able to get him out safely. Let's not go there shall we?

In defence of the gimmicky nature of the event it does often throw up quite a good race. And being at night you can't see that the surroundings look like Goole docks on a bad day. One of the measures Bernie used to use when choosing new venues for F1 races was whether the super rich wives of his super rich mates would want to go to a GP so that they could go shopping. Singapore certainly fulfills this need, and apparently the Nisa store in Silverstone village does a stonking trade in foie gras and Bollinger during the race weekend in the UK.

One other thing, the Russian GP was supposed to take place between Italy and Singapore. I suspect Bernie is still seething that his mate Vlad has had his moment in the global sports spotlight take away from him. Don't worry Bernie, F1 is still in bed with many other dictators and despots, just look at where the season ends.

Here's the timings for the Sky coverage

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Enjoy!
 
Did Ferrari and LeClerc know that Perez was under investigation?

If so, LeClerc should have ensured he stayed within 5 seconds as that is the typical penalty.

I suppose though that it would have likely been dropped to 3 to ensure the positions didn't change.
 
Just finished watching the C4 coverage. I can't use the word highlights as there weren't any.

That's two hours of my life I'm not going to get back.

:sleeping:
 
Just finished watching the C4 coverage. I can't use the word highlights as there weren't any.

That's two hours of my life I'm not going to get back.

:sleeping:
im with FB i enjoyed it. as you never knew what was coming next. 1 mistake & whole race was on its head. as Anthony Davidson it could have been any of them
 
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It was probably because I watched the C4 coverage. Had I been watching the race live then it may had that "what's going to happen" quality to it. As it was C4's coverage was awful.

Having said that, I'm struggling to think how much difference it would have made. Perez went ahead at the start and that was that. Hamilton moaned a lot about Sainz being slow and then went off. Verstappen pulled off a couple of decent moves and then went off. A few other drivers went off. Every one else just drove around not doing a lot.
 
congratulations are in order for sergio perez when he finishes in F1 i believe we have witnessed his greatest drive. singapore is tough enough in the dry with that heat, humidity, mental concentration to keep up for always 2 hours. but in those condition where anyone was capable of a mistake. to to keep a cool head, not get flustered try to push the limits, kept the tyres in good shape as new inters were big risk, old inters might fall off the cliff, slicks were 10-15 laps too early. deserves all the plaudits
 
congratulations are in order for sergio perez when he finishes in F1 i believe we have witnessed his greatest drive. singapore is tough enough in the dry with that heat, humidity, mental concentration to keep up for always 2 hours. but in those condition where anyone was capable of a mistake. to to keep a cool head, not get flustered try to push the limits, kept the tyres in good shape as new inters were big risk, old inters might fall off the cliff, slicks were 10-15 laps too early. deserves all the plaudits
Ive come to the conclusion Perez would ace Formula E because he seems to be good at street circuits mainly
 
I case any of you were wondering why Perez only got one 5 second penalty, the infringement on lap 10 resulted in a reprimand (did we know there was an investigation from the first SC period?), and the second one, on lap 36, was what gave the time penalty.


Meanwhile, under parc ferme, Red Bull completely changed the power unit on Perez's car.
 

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