Home Of Tong

After months of preparation, it all comes down to this, seeing real race cars zooming pass us. Today promise to be a busy day as we have line up a number of practices and 1 qualifying rounds. Formula BMW, Aston Martin and Porsche all started their practice session in the afternoon. Sorry no photos on them as today is the beginning of serious stuff and alertness is of the utmost, so no phototaking when track is closed (ready for racing). So if you miss it, you can only read about it.

But first up, some pix on the beginning of my day. I parked my car at Suntec today so I went in by gate 7.

It rained heavily in the morning and just when we were expecting a wet afternoon, the rain stopped and the hot afternoon sun dried up the track quickly. Here’s a look at turn 18 at noon.

We went about our mass briefing, and even got time to sing a birthday song to Tim, our clerk of the course (aka the most important person). Michael Smith (below), our Secretary of the Meeting, started off the mass briefing.

And then we are break up into various group for our briefing, and in our case, George is the one briefing us.

George – not of the jungle

Thereafter we are breakup into our sector, as we move to prepare our post for duty.

Me! All suited out

My team mates

Muscleman, or gorilla

Our team mates over at sector 17.8R

More of them, hiding under the safety car board

The session started with Formula BMW making their runs, not big scare except a couple of them spin off at the run off area at our turn. Elsewhere there are little incident as the practice session went according to plan. Fastest lap, 2:25.

Aston Martin are up next and boy do they look good. However, their timing fail to match their look as the fastest lap was at 2:30. Ringo Chong took part in this and was in the top 5 (if I am no wrong, pardon me if I am, I don’t have bionic memory).

The Porsche are the last to come out for practice in the afternoon and right from the start, you can see the sort of competiness lacking in the other 2 practices. They were overtaking and pushing their vehicle to the limit, signs of what is to come when the qualifying and race starts. The practice unfortunately has to be cut short as Ringo Chong, driving his 2nd practice (jumping from the Aston Martin to the Porsche) stalled his vehicle in the dangerous turn 10. So pratice was cut short and we have our first red flag of the afternoon. Not the type of color flag you want to see as it means session is stopped (prematurely).

Formula BMW than came out to do their qualifying and again with 8m 10s to go, the session has to be stopped (which means red flag again) as one run crashed at a dangerous point again. With time running out for the F1 practice to start, the session was cut short.

So at 7pm, we started our F1 1st practice session, the big one we are waiting for, with an almost full house crowd at the Bay grandstand, the F1 cars came zooming pass at 130db. Mark Webber was the first victim of the evening when he came crashing at turn 18 (that’s where I am!!!) and the place he crashed is pretty unsafe and double yellow flags were waved to warn the other driver. A few more scares and crashes end the practice 1 with Hamilton coming out tops with the Ferraris following closely behind.

After the track is open, a worried Mark Webber looks on as the recovery team try to get his car on to the truck.

Worried looking Mark Webber of Red Bull

Recovery team doing a fine job.

The 2nd practice session again saw Hamilton and Massa swopping places at the fastest lap. But at the end of the session, at the final lap, Alonso outdid everyone to finish top, which just proves this is going to be an interesting race. Kimi faded away in the 2nd practice session and he really need to find his form back. So tomorrow’s qualifying prove to be a crucial one and the weather might still play apart.

I leave you with this short video of recovering Mark Webber’s car.

More photos here:

F1 Singapore GP 2008 Practice Session

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Formula 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.