World premiere - racing the historic F1 monoposti in the spotlight in Singapore
This weekend , the first historic F1 race will take place at night. Just like the current Grand Prix, the historic field will also drive the practice sessions and races in Singapore at night.
The first free practice session and qualifying (held in one session) had to be red-flagged three times.
After around 10 minutes, Greg Thornton in the Lotus 91/5 (1982), the ex-car of Elio de Angelis, crashed into the crash barriers. He had no idea what had happened and was beside himself asking me: "Did you see what happened?" (Did you see what happened?)
Unfortunately not, because I had just come running in from somewhere else. When the track was clear again, the winner of the Monaco Historique GP, the Japanese driver Katsuaki Kubota, spun his Lotus 72 (1971) in a blind spot, which triggered the second red flag.
Once practice was underway again, Keith Frieser's Shadow DN-1 (1973) stopped and then the third red flag came out.
The fastest man in qualifying was Ollie Hancock in the Fittipaldi F5A (1978) ahead of Michael Lyons in the Hesketh 308E (1977) and Aaron Scott in the March 761 (1976).
It is perhaps interesting to compare the times: Hancock needed a time of 2:10.792 for his fastest lap over the 5.073 km. The lap record (from 2008) is held by Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari) with 1:45.599 and Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) drove 1:47.490 on the first day of practice yesterday!
