Round 15: Singapore

Justin:

I've fallen in love with F1 all over again.

No matter what gripes one might have with the current rules and regulations and all that stuff, when you see F1 live you are instantly reminded as to how bloody awesome our sport is.

Though, people with earplugs in Singapore....that is sad. You don't need them! Try out the V8's from 2013 and before...those will make your ears bleed!

The Singapore #F1NightRace is truly unique. It is intense, in your face, jam packed and a truly beautiful thing.

I was in the Waterfront Esplanade grandstand, which gave me a pretty good view (and a welcome breeze from the water) of a slower corner and I witnessed up close the cars accelerating out of the corner (just as they slide towards the barrier, they power and squirm away - amazing!).

Even the engine noise, whilst quieter than 2013 and before, is still pretty meaty and deep (more so than those last year in Hungary). When the exhausts face you as the cars power out of the corner, it's all pretty impressive.

The absolute poetry of a car going through a corner right on the edge, riding the kerbs on the outside right next to the barrier, before powering away - It is something to savour. Wow.

The drivers are artists, the track is their canvas, the car is their paint brush.

Nico Rosberg continued his winning run that started in Belgium and carried on in Monza.

He dominated Lewis in qualifying and in the race. It was probably just as much Hamilton not finding a correct setup as it was Rosberg having the qualifying lap of his life as he said afterwards. 0.7 seconds ahead of your teammate is a lifetime in F1.

It was a pretty fun race, where for a while you had interest up front as the first four cars stayed within touching distance.

Elsewhere there was a lot of fun - Vettel storming through from last to 5th should get a special mention, as should Alonso storming the start and going up to 5th until around half way through, eventually finishing 7th.

I'll share a couple more pictures I took here. The one of Alonso above is definitely getting framed on my wall, as are the two below.

Onto Malaysia! Sadly I didn't have the time or money to stay in Singapore for a few more days and leap across to take in the Malaysian Grand Prix too.

PS - I saw none other than the legend that is Damon Hill on my flight out. I should have asked him to sign my copy of his autobiography. No matter, he liked a Tweet I sent about it, so it's all good.

You can overtake at Monaco after all

Phil: Well, Monaco was certainly a unique venue for our 'live blog' experience. Apologies to anyone out there in the blogosphere who wasn't there, you missed some great banter, and I still maintain that Button should have braked really hard to get that thing out his sidepod, cartoon-style, before it cooked his engine. My esteemed colleague took the role of Murray Walker in our panto, and I was James Hunt. That's not rhyming slang, by the way.

Anyway, congratulations once again to Mark Webber for what but for his performance last week in Barcelona would have been the drive of his career: to pull out a lead, only to see it evaporate when the safety car came out, not once but four times, was the drive of a champion. He has seemed utterly invincible for two weeks and his confidence must be sky-high going to Turkey. Vettel has some thinking to do, but Red Bull are edging ahead at the moment. And I agree with my co-blogger that one of Webber, Vettel, Alonso and Button - the four men who have won races so far this year - will be champion.

Alonso proved in more ways than one that you can overtake at Monaco after all (even if it is a bit like the Hungaroring with houses). He scythed his way through the Virgins and Lotuses early on, but it's Schumacher's last-corner overtaking move that everyone is talking about. At last, the Schumacher of old is back, courting controversy as ever. Whether it was legal or illegal, it was certainly an audacious move, and one which really only Schumacher would ever have done. Something that appeals to me about F1 is the history, and there was so many historical ironies here - Schumacher and Ferrari, Schumacher and Alonso, at the same corner as in 2006 when he parked his Ferrari in quali and buggered up Alonso's flying lap, and most of all, a little wry smile that it was Damon Hill as race steward who had the pleasure of reducing his old rival to twelfth place, with a hint of retribution for the 1994 world championship. As for the rules, I haven't a clue, although a learned friend of ours who has been known to read this blog (eh? what?) thinks Schumacher is clearly right. I think the rules are likely to be self-contradictory, and weren't tidied up properly when the new rule about safety cars was brought in at the beginning of this season. As Eddie Jordan pointed out, and it's not often that he's right, the fact that it took Damon several hours to reach a decision indicates he wasn't sure either. The latest as of lunchtime today is that Ross Brawn is still sure he's right and Mercedes intend to appeal. Having said that, how many times do Formula 1 teams announce they're appealing a steward's decision, and then quietly forget about it?

It's well past my bedtime, so I ought to wrap up and nominate my skiver of the day, which my co-blogger has already alluded to. There are several candidates this weekend. My first thought was the nameless bloke at McLaren who left the wotsit in Jenson's car which made his engine brew up after three laps. My second was double world champion Fernando Alonso, who was clearly having forty winks on the way into the Rascasse on the last lap, thinking it was all over, when an elderly German snuck past him. However, I am going to nominate Eddie Jordan, who is fast becoming favourite for skiver of the year, for failing to take a dive into the BBC micro-pool, in the Red Bull post-race fashion, in aid of Children in Need. To be fair, it was a very small pool, and he'd probably have banged his not inconsiderable ego on the bottom, which wouldn't have been a pretty sight at all.