The F1 Thursday Pit Lane Experience 2015

We had an unexpected treat on Thursday just before the F1 weekend when we got the opportunity to walk the pit lane and get up close to the F1 cars!

How I ended up with tickets to The Thursday Pit Lane Experience, I can only say it was the Lord’s blessing. I was driving Noey to school one morning, I heard the Kiss 92 crew talk about Rev Up Singapore and give away tickets to the pit lane experience. Feeling curious about the event, I checked out the website and realised that you could win tickets on the spot by joining their contest. I keyed in my details, picked an icon (1 out of 4)… and was told I had won a pair of tickets to The Thursday Pit Lane Experience! It all happened so quickly and smoothly I didn’t believe it was true! It was only when I got the tickets a couple of days later that it sunk in.

Tickets!!

The son was naturally ecstatic when I told him we’ll be going to walk the pit lane. Just a couple of weeks ago when we saw the hoardings go up in preparation for the F1, he asked if I could bring him to Papa’s office to watch the cars from up high. Going to the pits on Thursday was going to be a bonus. Even more amazingly, the following day (Friday) was a school holiday so I could bring him without worrying that he was going to be up excessively late and be too tired for school the next day.

Thursday rolled round and I was excited! The husband and I used to following F1 quite closely. When we were dating we even made a trip up to Sepang to catch the race there one year. I made one attempt to watch the F1 when it came to Singapore, going to line up for tickets to the inaugural race – with rather mortifying results! That was before I realised that I was pregnant with Noey. When it turned out that his EDD was 2 weeks from the F1 date, my parents did effectively banned me from going. They also took my tickets! Since that year, I’ve talked about attending the race, but well, it just never happened. Needless to say, I was determined to make the most of this opportunity.

We’re here!

We were instructed to enter via Gate 1, after which we spent some time exploring the F1 Village. At the entrance, we found two large shops selling official merchandise, and two coffee and snack kiosks. Venturing further in, we came across the Village Stage where live acts were performing, and a rather large F&B area with seven vendors, (like Harry’s, Brewerks, Peach Garden, etc.) all serving up a variety of cocktails, beer, meals and finger food. Since an outing is not complete if Noey doesn’t get to buy a drink, we got ourselves a bottle of Coke ($4) and a box of chips ($10) to share from Harry’s and sat down at tables facing the Village Stage to enjoy them. There were performances on-going and I was quite fascinated by Dajiow, a Michael Jackson impersonator who took to the stage. We were some distance away but even from where we sat, I thought he was really good!

We just had to get on the “podium”!

The F1 Village stage started hosting acts on Thursday night all through to Sunday.

Kebabs! Definitely made both of us think of Papa!

It was clear that the highlight of the night — and indeed the only thing on everyone’s minds — was the pit walk. A long line started forming way before the pit walk was due to begin, and more just kept joining the queue. We eventually joined in (together with our friends June and little JJ) when the line started moving. We were heading onto the track! The excitement was palpable.

The first thing that struck me when we entered the circuit was how BRIGHT it was. Coming from the dimly-lit night it was quite blinding. We followed the crowd on a walk through a section of the track, past Turn 1 and into the pit lane. I wasn’t sure what we were going to see there — I had hoped for some cars at least! Noey and I were very pleased to see that most of the cars were indeed in and the pit crew were busy working on them. We also got to watch a couple of teams perform tyre-change drills, which was very exciting! Red Bull Racing were impressively quick and Noey dubbed them his favourite team on the spot.

The Lotus crew on the track as we round Turn 1. Those are Medical Cars in the distance — BMWs, not like the Safety Cars which Mercedes Benz.

Names I recognised! Also, pit crew hard at work.

Red Bull Racing pit crew getting ready for their type-change drill.

Changing tyres under watchful eyes.

Nothing going on in the Ferrari garage… “Why are they doing nothing? Why are they so lazy?” asked my demanding son. The cars were certainly late!

Here comes the Ferrari!

After walking the length of the pit lane, we were directed to u-turn onto the track itself and walk past the starting grid on our way out. We (and just about every around us) had a lot of fun taking silly pictures all the way down!

Vrrrooommm! Gentlemen, start your engines!

All in all, we spent about 1.5 hours on circuit, leaving at around 11pm to take the MRT back home. It was shockingly late for Noey to be up but the fact that he didn’t have school the next day assuaged some of the guilt I was feeling. Besides, I knew from the smile on his face that he had had a fantastic time.

Rev Up Singapore also offers the opportunity to take a Behind-The-Scenes tour to look at the Paddock, team garages and hospitality homes, and even restricted areas such as the Race Control room, podium and commentary booths. There was even Karting Training Programme for those between 14-21 years of age! You can be sure I’ll be looking out for this again next year!

And getting tickets to the race, of course. I think by then, we’ll finally be ready to catch the racing action up close.

The best picture I got of us on the track. I had really terrible luck with picking someone to take pictures for me that night. You would have thought someone handling an SLR would know how to take a decent shot, but no. Well, at least the guy who helped me with this very kindly and patiently waited for the Singapore GP sign to flash behind us to take this shot.