Post F1 Rock & Blues

By Yeoh Siew Hoon

“Phew, at last, we have the city back to ourselves,” said the taxi driver who drove me to town on Monday, the day after Lewis Hamilton drove to victory in the Formula 1 race that weekend.

“They call it F1, we call it F2,” he said.

Taxi drivers, God bless their cotton socks except in Singapore, invariably, they are probably wearing flip flops.

I asked him if he had gone to watch the races. He had three models of sports cars on his dashboard.

“How to afford?” he shrugged.

Truth is, he could have because this year, public tickets went on sale for as low as $28 and nearly 8,000 such tickets were sold.

Okay, it doesn’t guarantee you can see anything but it at least gets you into the mood of the race.

And that’s what it’s all about really. The mood. Not so much the race. Yes there are the die-hard fans who can tell you every boring bit of detail about a F1 race and the cars and the engines, but for the majority of the 240,000 who gathered at the trackside, it’s more about the mood of the event.

Not all of us can afford to be in the suites, not all of us know the right people to get us in, so most of us have to be on the outside, looking in.

And this year, man, I reckon it was more fun to be on the outside. No deafening noise to shatter your ear drums, instead sweet music to the ears at Fort Canning Park for three nights running as star after star did their thing to make F1 rock.

Anyone who can say Singapore is boring after this last weekend probably needs his head seen to.

Where else could you have watched stars like Simple Minds, ZZ Top and No Doubt in succession on one night? And then the next evening, Black Eyed Peas and Beyonce each performing full sets in the open air of the park.

In most cities, you’d be seated so far that you couldn’t even see the bling in Beyonce’s outfit but in Fort Canning Park, you are so close you can’t help but gawk at Gwen Stefani’s hard rock abs. Is that woman human? She looked like a robot and danced like one.

Out on the trackside were stars like Travis, Backstreet Boys and Chaka Khan.

Never have so many celebrities been in this little red dot at the same time, I felt like I was in Hollywood-meet-Monaco. And oh yes, Crashgate – the scandals only made the event juicier, I reckon.

The juicy Lindsay Lohan showed up to rehearse her hosting of the television broadcast of F1 Rocks! and got booed by the crowd because she was getting in the way of the music. Credit to the party girl, she took it well and showed a sense of humour in dealing with the boos.

See, a sporting event need not just be about the sports. Yes, F1 is extra glam, extra rich and that’s like attracting flies to honey but I couldn’t help comparing the mood on the streets in Beijing during the Olympics last year and the F1 race in Singapore.

For all its paranoia about getting things right and making things work like clockwork, Singapore showed it knew how to let its hair down, once in a while, and party.

Now, for that Alka Seltzer please.

Catch Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at The Transit Café
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