There is not a great deal to say about the racing at the Marina Bay Street Circuit this weekend. With the novelty of the night race concept having worn off, Singapore’s street circuit revealed itself to be on a par with Valencia’s in terms of on-track boredom.

That is not to say there aren’t a few talking points. Even though the race was quite insipid in many ways, there is little insipid about the podium. Lewis Hamilton put in a solid, though uneventful, performance to take a well-deserved second win of the season.

But I was most interested to watch the interview with his team mate, Heikki Kovalainen, after the race. Amid the latest rumours that Kimi Räikkönen is heading back to McLaren, Kovalainen is on the back foot. He needs to put in better performances in order to prove to McLaren and other teams that he deserves to be employed. But his demeanour after the race said it all — he sounded like a driver who realised he had been found out. 7th isn’t really good enough when the car is capable of winning.

Full credit must go to Timo Glock for finishing second. It is true that he largely inherited this position as a result of the woes of drivers in front: drive-through penalties for Rosberg and Vettel, and brake failure for Webber. But he was there to capitalise, having done well to qualify sixth when quite frankly to my eyes the car looked horrible on Friday. His team-mate Trulli, meanwhile, finished a lowly 12th.

Fernando Alonso obviously likes the circuit and scored the best result of the season at the same point where Renault’s fortunes turned last year. The Renault hasn’t looked capable of finishing on the podium all season. And Alonso has seemed strangely off-key to me this year. But he did it this time round, and caused a stir by dedicating his podium finish to Flavio Briatore. Some are interpreting it as a parting shot; others the human reaction of a man who has lost the boss who helped make him successful.

Whatever, it seems increasingly clear that his move to Ferrari for 2010 has been secured, with the rumour mill frantically suggesting that an announcement will come at Suzuka this coming weekend. Perhaps that is the reason why Alonso’s fire in the belly has returned to allow him to finish third.

Then we come to the title protagonists. Red Bull had another nightmare weekend which has pretty much hammered the last nail into the coffin for their championship hopes. All four Red Bull cars seemed to be suffering from brake issues, with such a failure making Webber’s race end in the barrier. Vettel could have had a much better result were it not for a drive-through for speeding in the pitlane, something which Vettel is adamant he has not done. In that context, fourth is a pretty impressive result for him.

As for Brawn, they salvaged something from what threatened to be a disaster. It seemed to be an up and down weekend for them. They seemed happy on Friday, but Button began complaining vociferously during Saturday Practice. Then both Brawns struggled in Qualifying, culminating in Barrichello’s session-ending crash. Ross Brawn declared qualifying to be disastrous.

As it was, they put in an okay performance during the race to finish 5th and 6th. Most importantly, Brawn have practically sealed up the Constructors’ Championship.

Meanwhile, Jenson Button has extended his Drivers’ Championship lead for the first time since Turkey. He edged further ahead of Barrichello by just one point, but with just three races to go, it looks like a tall order if anyone is to overhaul Button’s 15 point lead.

Maybe that makes the Championship boring now, which is perhaps why my eyes glazed over during that period in the middle of the race when nothing seemed to be happening. It has been an interesting season, but not an exciting one. Fair enough — we have had plenty of exciting seasons over the past few years and were perhaps overdue a dodgy one.

I am very much looking forward to the next race at Suzuka though. F1 finally returns to this classic circuit after three years, and it will surely provide a better class of show than the gimmicky Marina Bay circuit.

Just a final word about Adrian Sutil. What a chump. Fair play to him for trying to overtake someone, but his was a foul-up of Coulthard-esque proportions. Indeed, the entire incident was reminiscent of Coulthard’s attempt to overtake at Valencia last year.

But from my perspective, Sutil’s attempted move on Alguersuari was never on in a month of Sundays, and his determination to keep the throttle floored while in a spin was a stupid move when there was oncoming traffic. You have to feel sorry for Nick Heidfeld, who had his amazing run of consecutive finishes brought to a cruel end by a driver who should know better. Sutil’s $20,000 fine seems hefty, but I don’t feel much sympathy.

We have just about become comfortable with the concept of night races, after the success of last year’s Singapore Grand Prix. But in Bernie Ecclestone’s quest to have all races starting at a sociable hour in Europe, could he have inadvertently invented the dusk race?

There were a couple of close calls last season. The season finale at Interlagos last year was strange enough. The fact that the entire circuit was plunged into complete darkness immediately after the chequered flag only added to it. The podium was lit, and the sky behind looked pitch black even with all of the techniques they can use on television to mitigate it.

The sun wasn’t even setting. Sunset was approximately 90 minutes after the end of the race. But heavy clouds ensured that if the race hadn’t finished, they may well have had to bring out the red flag anyway, so dark the place seemed.

It was a similar scenario during Friday Practice for the Italian Grand Prix last year. Even in the late morning, when the sun is high in the sky, a fierce storm gave teams a dry (okay, a very, very wet) run for the dark conditions they were to expect at the following race in Singapore.

In the past two yeras the start time of the Australian Grand Prix has been shifted from 1400 local time to 1530 last year to 1700 this year. The idea behind this is to have the race starting at 0700 British time (0800 CET), which is a smidgen more sociable than 0300.

I don’t know about you, but being a nightowl I much preferred the middle-of-the-night start. It felt like a special occasion, and for me it was all part of the romance and the excitement of the build-up to the start of the season.

Sometimes ITV put on a special night of programming building up to it. No such thing from the BBC this year of course. A “grand prix night” is a bit redundant when the grand prix is on in the morning. This is a missed marketing opportunity, showing once again that Bernie is not quite as smart as he thinks he is.

But does the later start also have implications for safety? The evening start is a messy compromise. Bernie wanted a night race, but the Australian GP organisers refused. So they met in the middle.

That’s all very well in normal circumstances. The race starts at 1700. So the sun will be pretty low, but it will still be daylight.

But what if something unforeseen happens? The start of last year’s Brazilian Grand Prix was delayed by fifteen minutes. If the race has to be stopped, that will add more time as well. On top of all this, the race may be anything up to two hours long (and that excludes any stoppages for red flags).

On 29 March 2009 the sun sets in Melbourne at 1918. Let’s say the formation lap takes three minutes. If the two hour time limit is reached, cars could still conceivably be running at racing speeds at 1905 (for the time it takes for the leader to reach the finish line, then the cars on the lead lap to complete that lap). Then there is the in-lap. If, for some reason, the red flag has to come out, they would only be able to take ten or fifteen minutes maximum to be sure that the race will be completed with the sun still in the sky.

It is an unlikely scenario. The two hour time limit is seldom reached, and a lengthy race stoppage is thankfully also rare. But the possibility exists. I’m surprised not to have seen anyone else mention this. Can the drivers, marshals and spectators be sure that all of the appropriate precautions have been taken?

Could the Australian Grand Prix be the first ever dusk race?

I’ve been a bit busy lately so I’ve been falling behind a bit on the posting front. I’ve not even got all of my 2008 season review posts out of the way, and before I knew it the 2009 season had begun in the form of testing at Barcelona! But there is plenty of time in the off-season for me to discuss these things. Here are just a handful of bits and bobs to bridge the gap until my next post here.

If you follow me on Twitter you may know that I have found myself bombarded with emails from PR companies who are trying to get me to include stuff in my blogs that I have absolutely no interest in. And sometimes the tone of the emails are slightly hectoring, which doesn’t exactly make me any more inclined to feature their “story”. Well, at long last, one of these pitches has actually appealed to me and I’ve decided to include it in this blog.

Unfortunately it requires me to embed some javascript and I don’t think WordPress lets you place javascript in the posts, so I’ve positioned it at the top of the sidebar for the time being. It is quite an amusing video though, showing that McLaren do have a sense of humour after all.

Okay, so it’s a Vodafone video rather than McLaren, but it comes just a couple of months after McLaren went viral with their humorous video previewing the Singapore Grand Prix. For a team with such a grey image, it’s good to see.

It looks like the BBC’s plans for next season are finally taking shape. David Coulthard’s involvement in next season’s coverage have been confirmed through a semi-official source. Yesterday Martin Brundle revealed for himself that he will be involved.

I have also heard that USP Content have retained the contract to produce coverage for BBC Radio 5 Live. That’s good news, because I think they’ve done a great job for the past few years. I often chose to listen to the Radio 5 Live commentary rather than James Allen, even enduring a two second delay between hearing something happen and seeing it (at least it meant I didn’t miss seeing something when it did happen!).

I’m looking forward to seeing what the television and radio teams can put together for next season. Personally, I’d love to hear Martin Brundle and David Coulthard making an appearance on the Chequered Flag podcast.

Rumour has it that the BBC will be announcing something to coincide with the Sports Personality of the Year award bash, where Lewis Hamilton is expected to win.

BMW have given us a taste of what 2009 will look like. I will probably post a more in-depth article about my thoughts on testing later on in the winter. But for the time being, all I will say is: yuk!

Well thankfully the predicted procession around the streets of Singapore failed to come and instead we were treated to an action-packed race. Okay, so it needed a couple of crashes, safety car periods and another calamitous weekend from Ferrari to make it so, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. I’m just glad it wasn’t a bore of Valencia-sized proportions.

First of all, you really have to take your hat off to Fernando Alonso. For me, he has been one of the best drivers of the season and if anyone else deserved a win it was him. He’s been fighting hard all season in a car that has seldom been capable of keeping up with the front runners.

Alonso’s weekend got off to the worst possible start when he had a “fuel supply” issue (damn credit crunch) during qualifying, leaving him a poor 15th on the grid. This forced Renault to be inventive with their strategy, and they took a risk by having him start the race with a very light fuel load, pitting early and hoping for the Safety Car to come out. After his pitstop, Alonso was actually in last place.

But with this strategy Renault had struck gold. Alonso was the only person to have made his pitstop before the Safety Car came out and was able to move up the field slowly but surely until he was leading the race. From there, he looked awesome. He needed a shovelful of luck, but that shouldn’t detract from what was a great drive. I, for one, was delighted to see Alonso — whom I regard as the best driver on the grid — back on the top step of the podium.

Ironically, the Safety Car that Alonso needed was brought out by his team-mate Nelsinho Piquet’s crash. Bring those tin foil hats out of the cupboard!

Another man who benefited greatly from the situation was Nico Rosberg. He was running out of fuel when the Safety Car came out, so had to make a pitstop while the pitlane was closed. He got a 10 second stop–go penalty for that, but Rosberg was in the unique position of leading the race at the time, enabling him to pull out an enormous lead. As such, he actually lost very little in the way of track position, coming out in 3rd after his penalty.

Before the Safety Car came out, Rosberg was 10th. So by making an illegal pitstop, Rosberg still gained a lot despite the penalty. Yet another reason why the current Safety Car rules are ridiculous.

Hats off to Rosberg though. He did a stunning job to build up that gap and he kept his head to complete a career-best 2nd place finish. Apparently it’s all down to Frank Williams’s lucky tartan trousers.

Robert Kubica had no such luck. He went round behind the Safety Car for an extra lap before making his pitstop, so he came out in traffic. His stop–go penalty really hurt him and he was never in contention again. I think that’s the second time this season Kubica has been seriously disadvantaged by this disgrace of a rule.

Ferrari didn’t need Safety Car shenanigans to cause their race-ending pitstop disasters. Ferrari’s semi-automatic traffic light system that was brought under the spotlight in Valencia completely failed in Singapore.

A human was operating the lights, but goodness knows what he was thinking when he switched the lights to green as the fuel hose was nowhere near being released. Felipe Massa correctly read the green light that appeared, but took the fuel hose with him all the way down the pitlane — very reminiscent of the incident involving Christijan Albers at the 2007 French Grand Prix. The Ferrari mechanics sprinted down to the end of the pitlane to remove the fuel hose (with much difficulty) and Massa was able to carry on, but his race was over.

Massa had looked in control of the race. And his qualifying performance on Saturday was mesmerising, as he took pole by six tenths. But he scored no points in Singapore. This has enabled Hamilton (who was slightly, but not greatly, disadvantaged by the Safety Car situation) to regain the momentum coming into the final three races of the season.

It was, in fact, a truly disastrous race for Ferrari. They have had a few awful races this year. To compound Massa’s pitlane problem, Kimi Räikkönen had another one of his strange moments where he has fallen asleep, and grabbed some air at the controversial kerbs at turn 10, ploughing straight into the wall.

Red Bull are beginning to look like they are gaining some momentum again. They arrived in Singapore with some noticeable new aerodynamic pieces and they were performing pretty well during the race. Webber looked like he was going to score some points until he had a gearbox failure. David Coulthard, meanwhile, was running 3rd at one point before coming home in 7th following a minor pitlane snafu when the lollipop was raised too early, which was handled much better than Ferrari’s similar incident.

All-in-all, the first-ever night race must be hailed as a great success. It looked better on television than I expected. The circuit was quite fun with a couple of booby traps catching the drivers out, which is what we want to be honest. There was some overtaking, which is much more than can be said for Valencia. And it looked as though the crowds were huge, and they certainly seemed very enthusiastic.

I have to admit I was rather sceptical about night races beforehand, but this worked really well and there were no real disasters. The only real problem was the botched pitlane entry and exit designs, but that would have happened whether it was night time or day time. I now wouldn’t mind seeing more night races in the future.

Now we have three final flyaway races to go, with a double-header in Japan and China coming up. I’m off to catch some zzzs in anticipation for the early morning starts.

I have written before about the stick the Australian Grand Prix bosses are getting from all angles. Even since I wrote that post, Bernie Ecclestone’s demands have become ever more extreme. In particular, Mr Ecclestone’s current obsession with night races appears to have deepened. His comments suggest that he very much wants to have his cake and eat it. For me, the logic behind night races is muddled and confused.

We know that Bernie Ecclestone wants Formula 1 to expand its reach throughout the globe, particularly into Asia. The motivation behind this approach is fairly sound. Take F1 to the people of Asia, and the people of Asia will come to F1, building on the sport’s strong fanbase in Europe and expanding it eastward.

However, I wonder if Bernie Ecclestone’s motives are really as noble and simple as that. The more this project continues, the more it begins to look like Bernie Ecclestone is simply out to persuade gullible governments of developing countries to pay through the nose for the privilege of having an F1 race. Many of these governments will do anything to feel like members of the western club of developed nations, and where better to start than that most global — yet still quintessentially western — of sports, motor racing?

Yet, you have to wonder if these governments are really getting value for money. I think not. How long will it take before the good people of Bahrain, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, et al. realise they are being swindled?

Until that happens, it is by exploiting this situation that Bernie Ecclestone is able to pull the same trick on not-so-gullible western governments. “Look at all these other Grands Prix that are subsidised,” he says. “Why can’t you do the same?” This is the heart of Ecclestone’s demands to the organisers of the British, French and Australian Grands Prix among others that have the Sword of Damocles dangling above them.

The demands for a night race show up Ecclestone’s muddled thinking and hypocrisy. The idea behind night races is so that the ‘flyaway’ races can be broadcast on prime time television in Europe, where F1’s strongest base of support is. But this completely contradicts the supposed big idea behind hosting races in places like Asia in the first place.

Why take F1 to Asia then make the residents of these places get up in the middle of the night to watch them? Why, indeed, should the residents of Melbourne — or, indeed, Singapore City — be asked to put up with wailing F1 engines at 3am?

Meanwhile, the fact that the time difference means that European F1 fans have to get up in the middle of the night to watch the Australian Grand Prix is one of the things that defines us as F1 fans. We like to get up at silly o’clock to watch F1 — it is part of the quaint charm of the Australian and Japanese Grands Prix. Perhaps, like Ollie, I might not even be interested in F1 today had I not viewed Formula 1 as a cheeky opportunity to stay up late at night as a youngster.

Okay, so not all fans will be bothered to get up at 3am to watch this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix. But there will be a damn sight more Europeans than Asians willing to get up at 3am for F1. The big idea behind night races has now unravelled.

The only other thing a night race has going for it is the pure spectacle of seeing F1 cars racing under floodlights. I am sorry, but I just can’t get excited about that.

I watched last weekend’s Qatar MotoGP, the first race to be held under floodlights. But it was clear that the night time conditions added little to the spectacle. The only time it looked much different was from the overhead helicopter view of the circuit. Apart from that, the only difference was a few funny shadows. Big whoop!

By the end of the race, the BBC’s excellent commentators Charlie Cox and Steve Parrish (take note ITV — the Beeb know how to cover a motor race properly!), were just asking themselves, “Why a night race?” The best answer was, because we can. Is that reason enough?

The commentators also touched on the environmental impact. When Formula 1 is supposedly trying to become a greener sport, it is now asking race organisers to generate ridiculously huge amounts of electricity.

Many of the big ideas that Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley propose contradict each other in fundamental ways. The lack of joined-up thinking in Ecclestone’s current demands for night races, Asian venues and street circuits astonishes me.