The Singapore Grand Prix

Recently, the news has been abuzz with reports about having an F1 race here, and a few months ago, it was approved. Now, we not only sit and wonder how fast our government can do stuff when it wants to do, but also how we are supposed to have a race here.

This post isn't directly related to the article, but I'm about to speak about the F1 issue as a whole.

Firstly, let's see what are the motives behind the push for F1. Just briefly thinking through, I see the economy booming as being one of the first few benefits to arise from this issue. Hotels, restaurants and even shopping centers around the area of the race, or around Singapore as whole would increase at least 3 fold.

F1 is a sport with a very large fan base you know. There are people who follow the sport, as in they will attempt to watch every race, not from the comforts of their homes 20,000km away, but rather, at the track itself.

These people would undoubtedly spend loads of money here, paying for hotel fees, paying for Pastamania, paying for cheap t-shirts with "Singapore is a fine city" printed on it in big red bold letters. F1 would certainly be a big tourist attraction, drawing crowds, and drawing the money that follows the crowds.

Other places , such as Malaysia, would only have a puny little track event. We however, striving for the best must have a night race, which would make track races seem mundane and boring. Besides, night races are the in thing now. Movies like Tokyo Drift, or games like NFS: Carbon have certainly proven so. Bringing in F1 would make Singapore a fun city to be in, but making it a night race would make it even more fun and exciting, from a consumer's point of view.

Singapore seems to be trying really hard to get tourists to come over to Singapore. From the London, I mean Singapore Eye, to now, the Sepang, I mean Marina F1 Grand Prix. And the funny part about it is that most of the, let's call them gimmicks, have been recycled from other countries. We seem to be just taking what works for others and using it for ourselves. Have we no innovation?

Singapore hasn't really found its niche for the tourism market. I mean for like countries such as Taiwan or Cities like Shenzhen or Hong Kong, you go there to shop. For places like Tokyo, you go there to see the scenery. Ahem. But for Singapore, the only nice natural things we have are beaches and nature reserves, which are not even real and other South East Asian countries do have better than ours. Our shopping isn't great too. Things are not cheap here because they are likely to be imported from somewhere else. So Singapore is using these so called "tourist attractions" in order to increase the number of people flowing through the arrival gate.

But, I digress.

There are, however problems that seem to be in need of fixing if we are to have our F1 race here. The first of which would be convinience. Now obviously, if you are gonna have to use the road for F1 racing, having cars go at 250km/h, you wouldn't want to have a Honda Odessey hogging the road right? So the roads used for track would be closed off to the public.

And it's downtown. Now, don't say that it's gonna be a night race so there won't be any problems. It's bound to be closed off the whole day. Did you know that during National day, every road within 1km radius of the National Stadium was closed off 6 hours before the parade actually started? So, the area around Marina would have to be closed off, for security reasons as well as logistical reasons. When preparing for a race,you wouldn't want random people walking past right?

The Marina area has many office building, including the giant humongous Suntec City. And I'm not just talking about size. The revenue it generates boggles the mind. Having it being cut off Singapore would cost Singapore quite a bit.

And we all know how inconvinient it was for everyone during the World Bank period right?

The other issue would be that of the suitability of the roads. Singapore, being a green city, has trees all around. And these trees shed all the time, where a small gust of wind would blow the whole lot of dead leaves down.

The engine of an F1 car requires air for it to work well. Not leaves and other bits. Those are highly dangerous, and can cause the engine to combust if those leaves get sucked into the whirling vortex that is the air filter.

Lighting is not a big issue. Portable spotlights, those gigantic kinds could be easily erected during the time of the race.

Although sadly, I don't think F1 grand prix brings in any race queens. Much unlike Japan's drift races.

842 words

Sources: http://www.geocities.com/j9nieminen/cna.html