On the 28th of this month the republic will host its first Formula One event, the Singapore Grand Prix. It will also be the first night time grand prix, ever, and it is an occasion that is looked forward to with much enthusiasm. I’ve been watching some of the promotional videos on my lap top and I have to say that the prospect of seeing the cars roar along Esplanade Drive to be confronted by what must be the sharpest corner at any race track in the world today at the Fullerton — shades of the Gasworks Hairpin at Monaco — is an exciting one. Momentarily slowing to amore or less walking pace, the drivers will then literally floor the accelerator pedal as they tear off over Cavenagh Bridge towards the Cricket Club. The noise will be terrific and no doubt there will be some rubber-burning, twitchy moments too, as more than 700 brake horsepower is transferred to the tarmacadam outside the Fullerton Hotel; I reckon the roof terrace of the old Water Boat Office on the inside of the bend will be the hottest spot in town from a spectator’s point of view.

And it is the ‘in town’ aspect which in no small way adds to the excitement and interest generated by this year’s race because, nocturnal emissions aside, the Singapore Grand Prix is also somewhat unusual in another respect in that it is a Formula

One event that will be held on ordinary roads. That is to say, each twist and turn of the 3.2-mile circuit will be predicated by the urban topography of our city, rather than the deliberations of a professional track designer like Herman Tilke, seated at his computer to work out the optimum camber for each turn. The grand prix at Monte Carlo and the Le Mans 24-hour sports car race aside, road racing is pretty much a thing of the past — it belongs to a bygone era, the days when racing drivers were like Olympian gods, their names carved in stone — all too often their tombstones, one might add. Tazio Nuvolari, Rudolf Caracciola, Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio and of course British ace, Stirling Moss — their names roll of the tongue like a litany of latter-day saints.

In their day, it was the norm that grand prix races should be held on everyday roads with just a few strategically-placed straw bales to indicate where there was a corner or to guard against an errant race car sliding off the track into an unyielding lamppost. And it was this casual acceptance of natural hazards inherent in the landscape — almost as if they were an integral part of driving a racing car to victory — which somehow added to the aura of the contemporary racing driver back then. As Stirling Moss famously remarked, “To go flat-out through a bend that is surrounded by level lawn is one thing. But to go flat-out through a bend that has a stone wall on one side and a precipice on the other — that’s an achievement!”