The Fastest Cars in the World

Noey loves cars, especially the racing sort.

“Zoooooooooooooooom!” he would shout, at the top of his voice, whether he is pretending to have a race or watching one. Imagine the endless drone of a racing car rising and falling in tone with the gear changes, then couple that with a little boy copying the same sounds at the top of his voice, and that’s pretty much how it is in our home!

Noey has a particular fascination with F1 cars. “F1 racing cars are the fastest cars in the world!” he says with awe. It feels like we’ve come full circle when I see how much he loves watching the races, seeing as how he was the very reason for me having missed the inaugural Singapore race. This after I went to lengths to get tickets. I’ve never bought tickets in the subsequent years. There was no time to go, with babies on our hands. Especially when the F1 weekend falls just the week before Noey’s birthday. (Yes, on hindsight, it was a good thing that I didn’t go that first year since I was obviously really close to delivering, but I’ve also always felt a tinge of regret about it.)

This year, while i still didn’t buy any tickets, I thought it would be a good idea to bring Noey down to soak in a bit of F1 atmosphere around the circuit and maybe see and hear the noisy cars that he’s so fond of imitating. He was super excited when he realized where we were going on Friday night and immediately went to get his toy racing car (an ancient toy sweet dispenser which used to belong to my brother, and which only has 3 wheels left) and started quizzing it about in the air.

He insisted on bringing it along so the car came with us. Everyone who saw us that night smiled at the sight of a little boy clutching his racing car, headed to the races.

We arrived at Raffles Place around 8.30pm, only to realise that the next set of practice sessions was only going to start at 9.30pm. With some time to kill, we wandered around outside the Fullerton Hotel, watched the river taxis go to and fro, and walked up to the gate outside the ACM. I tried to persuade Noey to go on a boat ride in the meantime, but no, he just wanted to wait to see the cars. In the end we sat the side of the Cavanagh Bridge with our feet dangling, waiting for the action to start. Noey was a good sport about waiting, and to kill time, I also showed him some YouTube videos of the race on my phone. (Good ol’ iPhone!)

Time passed pretty quickly and before long, we heard the unmistakable whine of the engines as the cars started flashing past on the Anderson Bridge. Boy, was it LOUD! I had clearly forgotten how loud they were. As soon as it hit me, I quickly hopped off our perch on the bridge and started heading towards the nearby office block instead. That was a good decision on my part because Noey is pretty sensitive to sound and it was so loud that he started asking me, hopefully, if we were going home. “We’re here to see the cars,” I told him, “so we’re going to see them first before we go home.”

This was my original plan — to bring him to peer out of the windows of DD’s office block. And it turned out to be a great idea. “Racing cars!” Noey shouted in delight as he spied the track below us. We parked ourselves at an unblocked window and Noey had a great time watching the cars tear around, and pretending to be a racing car himself. I had a great time talking him through parts of the track and watching his unbridled joy and excitement.

“We went somewhere quiet to watch the racing cars!” he told his Papa, with satisfaction. And now when he sees clips of the race on TV, he’d merrily announce, “Noey saw this!”.

Easily, our best free date ever.