The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

To say that the first night / street F1 race in Singapore was exciting would be an understatement. There were more overtaking, crashes, team tactics and actions, packed into yesterday's race compared to the whole season put together.

I would normally not write about F1 races as I don't see the point. It would just be a two line blog. How I saw it yesterday would have been, 'Massa gets pole position at Sing GP ..... Massa wins Sing GP.' The race is getting so boring now that I would normally fall asleep watching it on the second lap and I would get up just before the last lap and it would still be the same.

But boy was I wrong yesterday. I was at the edge of my seat from the word go right through to when the chequered flag was dropped. There were times when I had to peek from the back of my sofa to watch as it was so intense.

Who would have thought that the person starting on pole position (Massa) would end up 13th on the grid at the end of the race and the person starting 15th on the grid (Alonso) would go and win the first ever night street race? But that was the results in the end.

After leading the race for 14th laps, Massa’s position was snatched after Alonso’s team mate Piquet crashed into the wall. The crash meant that the safety cars were deployed and this is when the race was turned on its head. Bad for Piquet but good for team mate Alonso as he went on to lead the race after confusions and traffic in the pits. Drivers (Rosberg and Kubica) were diving into the pits before it was open and getting themselves a 10 second stop and go penalty.

Then when the pits was open to refuel, Massa came in to refuel but drove off before the fuel nozzle was off the car, taking the whole fuel hose down the pit straight and knocked a couple of Ferrari crews in the event. He then had to stop at the end of the pit and the crew had to run to his car to detach the hose. Although it was a mechanical fault and not his fault, that cost him a lot of time as when he rejoined the race, he was last of the pack. If that wasn’t bad enough, he had a drive through penalty for not exiting safely and almost colliding with Sutil from Force India.

If you thought that was it, well, it wasn’t. Later in the race on the 51st lap, Massa spun, but as he was recovering Sutil didn’t see him and crashed into a barrier. Although it was at low speed, the safety car had to come out once again while the marshals removed the car and cleared the debris.

Ferrari’s Raikkonen crashed on the 58th lap which means that for the first time in the season, Ferrari didn’t score a point on driver or construction table.

Alonso went on to win his first win since Monza 2007 and Renault’s first since Japan 2006. Rosberg was second and had to be driver of the day as after all the chaos and stop and go penalty he had, he was still second.

And where was Brit Hamilton in the end? Starting second, he dropped a position but continues to lead the driver’s championship by seven points. And if that wasn’t enough to turn the Ferrari crews red, McLaren snatching the lead from Ferrari in the construction table by one point should do it.

Oh, and did I say that all this was happening under floodlights? Well, they could have added a few more dramas by switching the lights off for a few seconds. Maybe next year...