42point195
By marathonerArchive for Formula 1
Lights, camera, action!
As I write this, the dust has already settled on the race track. In fact, workers are in the process of tearing the Marina race track apart to make way for regular traffic on Tuesday.
Last year, I watched the race live on TV in the US on a Sunday morning and wished that I was here. This year, I am here. Indeed, the sensation is completely different – watching images of cars racing on the circuit glowing in the dark beamed to my living room and being right in the middle of it, listening to the sounds from the engines reverberate through the built up Marina and City Hall areas.
This race weekend was also a photo outing for me. I decided to take most of my photographs during the practice and qualifying sessions and spend most of the time during the race watching the race itself.
I carried my modest 17-70 mm lenses to the track, where I saw many other photography enthusiasts show up with their humongous telephoto lenses. Even my tripod, the one that is compact enough for me to be willing to carry it with me when I travel, appeared wimpy in the presence of their more sturdy and taller ones.
Never mind, we work with the gear we have and learn to be creative with it. That can be said very easily, but for a moment, I was at a loss of what to do when faced with the low lighting conditions and the very fast cars. For a number of shots, I ended up shooting the fence, or the track, or anything, except the cars.
While on one end of the spectrum, we have the well-equipped photographers, there were many spectators with equipment that belonged to the other end of the spectrum. More than once, I peeked over their shoulders to steal a glance at the LCD screens on their PhD* cameras. Hey, these people actually managed to capture the cars in their shots. Well, if everybody else could why couldn’t I?
Think, think, think… I had to think – what could I do with my camera? What could I try? I think I eventually “got it”, and I managed to get a few decent shots. The race track was lit, I had my camera, and I was able to capture some of the action.
* Press here, dummy!
F1. Night race. Singapore.
Watching a video of Steve Slater’s interview on Channel News Asia’s website was enough to rekindle my dormant excitement over the first F1 race in Singapore. A sport I appreciate. A night race. In my country.
Races on the F1 calendar usually take place at 8 am Eastern Time every other Sunday morning in the US. Over here, my F1 season is about checking the F1 website for qualifying results on Saturdays, making predictions of the race results on Facebook’s Formula 1 Picks, catching the race on TV on Sunday if I wake up early enough, or stare at the F1 website’s live timing screen and watch the timings refresh if I wake up early enough but none American TV station is showing the race ‘live’. Lately, my F1 season has also overlapped with my running season. At 8 on Sunday mornings, I have been running, probably in no man’s land and though I have been waking up very early, there was no way I could have watched the races.
With this kind of exposure during the F1 season, it is hard to sense the excitement and buzz around the races.
As yesterday’s race in Monza came to an end, the next race in Singapore is only 2 weeks away. 2 weeks away. A night race. In my country.
How should I put excitement in words? I am very eager to see a race hosted in my country. In Singapore, on the same roads along which I used to jog regularly – most part of the track had been part my my jogging route. In the part of the city, past the familiar landmarks where I used to hang out in evenings and weekends. Imagine, Kimi Raikonnen, in his Ferrari, flying over the Esplanade Bridge.
When we watch Monaco, we recognise the tunnel, the marina and Lowes hairpin, overlooked by some building where its occupants would simply lean over the window and watch the cars meander past. We remember names of landmarks, such as the casino and the swimming pool, but never having been there before, these are simply names that cannot be associated with any image and memory in my mind.
In Singapore, I will know where Kimi is as he speeds past City Hall and the Padang because I will not miss the dome of the old Supreme Court and the UFO-like structure that crowns the new one. I know he passes Victoria Concert Hall if I see the clock tower, which I knew, since I was a kid, as the clock that gives the most accurate time in the country. As he makes the turn from Esplanade Drive onto Raffles Avenue, I will recognise the iconic “Durian” and I can boast to other non-local viewers that I used to jog here almost everyday when construction workers were still getting it built to house what is called the Esplanade Theatres on the Bay today.
Esplanade Bridge (Esplanade Drive runs over it) leading to the “Durian” on the right. The creature monument is the Merlion and the tall building in the background is Swissotel the Stamford.
The “Durian”, with its neighbouring hotels along Raffles Avenue.
There is a certain sense of pride to it – the sense of “I come from this nice country and I would like to show you around”. Now, having most of my pictures of the city taken at night, I have to say that Singapore has a lovely cityscape when the sky gets dark and lights come on in the city. I am hoping the night race will bring out this face of hers to viewers elsewhere in the world.
I do not want to admit it, but there is a lingering sense of regret that I will not be in town to witness my home race at night.
10 seconds per mile
The Formula 1 season lit off two weekends ago. Off we go with another season where millisecond-precision counts and hopefully we will have another exciting one like last years’, where Kimi Raikkonen took the World Championship, against all odds, at the very last race of the season.
It will probably sound a stretch if I were to say that running is as much of a precision sport as Formula 1 racing. Sure, we runners do not storm down our race course at a speed like the race cars do – that is a no-brainer. How many of us, average runners, are bothered about how aerodynamics affect our performance? Do we care much at all if our running shoes can help us run faster? How many of us really make a conscious effort to minimize the time wasted when slowing down at drink stops?
Running can be a precision sport in its own and it is more so at the elite level. Before Haile Gebreselassie broke the men’s world record at the Berlin Marathon last year, I read an interesting post that talked about what he needed to do and what had to go right at the race for him to break the marathon’s world record. Basically, he needed to stick to the shortest path of the course; nothing should go wrong for him as he refueled at aid stations; he needed to concentrate and race at the right pace – not too fast, not too slow (4 min 46 s/mile was his eventual pace); environmental factors such as temperature and wind had to be in his favour. Last but not least, there was the element of uncertainty that things could go wrong in the span of a long 26.2 miles.
Does it not sound like Formula 1 racing? Driving along to the racing line; executing pit-stops perfectly; concentrating on the track – do not spin off and do not push so hard that the engine gets blown; dealing with external factors such as rain. The races usually run more than 50 or 60 laps and take about an hour and a half to complete. Plenty of unexpected things can happen in this one and a half hour.
Now, I am definitely not an elite runner. Way far from it. Neither do I have the privilege to work for a Formula 1 team, a job that makes the fantasy of a mechanical engineer. So, what has “precision” got to do with my running, an average casual-but-serious runner’s running?
10 seconds per mile – if I could improve by that much, at the very least. A half marathon is 13.1 miles. Be quicker by 10 seconds per mile and that will be over 2 minutes quicker to finish the race. It looks pretty achievable too.
1 minute per mile – that will be more demanding, and not without some persistence and determination. Do the math, and it gives a difference of 13 minutes for the entire race.
Well, these are the bounds that I can set for myself. Nothing beyond that, which I am not ready to handle physically. Of course, there are the external elements what affect how I eventually perform. I am trying hard to keep myself from falling sick now, so that I will be in good shape on Sunday.
Formula 1 humour
We are in the midst of the Formula 1 season and we see competition heating up.
Here is a brilliant commercial featuring the McLaren Mercedes team that has been posted on YouTube. Yes, even though they are not the team that I am supporting, I still find this commercial a brilliant one.
It helps to know who the people in the commercial are to get the humour. The clip features McLaren’s two drivers for this season – Fernando Alonso, reigning F1 champion for two consecutive seasons and Lewis Hamilton, F1 rookie currently leading this season’s F1 championship race by 7 points, ahead of Alonso. Former F1 champion with McLaren and retired Finnish driver, Mika Hakkinen , made a brief appearance towards the end. His appearance is the golden moment that gives this clip all its novelty.
