This past year, I got to do something totally new and interesting while in Singapore: attend the Singapore F1 race! As much of a car nut as I am, I’ve never been to a professional race event like this before, so I was totally geeked to get to go. One of the appeals to the Grand Prix race in Singapore (to me anyway) is that the track is actually on city streets in downtown Singapore, which get closed off and barricaded in! So cool!
The hotel I stayed in was just down the street from where part of the track carved through the city, which was completely awesome. The main event was on Sunday afternoon, however starting on Friday, there were time trails and other races happening, so the downtown area was filled with the sounds of race cars and music (turns out the race venue is also a BIG scene for concerts as well, and seemingly more people go to the race to see the shows than the actual race!), so by Sunday I was totally hyped up and ready to go!
I of course took my camera, and I quickly learned that shooting fast-moving cars at night was a challenge! Who knew!? Luckily the track lights were really bright, which allowed me to actually get some of the action, and then I had to make artistic choices like, do I blur the city and keep the cars sharp, or do I let the cars blur and keep the city sharp. As you can tell above, my favorite was keeping the car sharp and letting the city blur, but below are some of my other favorites with different perspectives. Another challenge I ran into was finding a decent vantage point. I didn’t want to break the bank going to the race, so I bought the cheapest pass I could for the main event. The nice thing about this is that you can walk around and see different turns, etc, the bad thing is that none of the stands have great views. BUT, I made due and found a couple spots to see all the action.
All in all I can say that the Singapore Grand Prix was a total blast. If you’re a concert goer and a car person, you’ll be in heaven! I like concerts, but didn’t recognize any of the bands (am I getting that old?)… but I still thoroughly enjoyed myself!
–Dan Thompson
