Few modern F1 venues are as dazzling as the Marina Bay circuit in Singapore. If you watch the early practice or the young women of F1 Academy in their races, you’ll get an idea of the street circuit’s relationship to the city in daylight as it takes in landmarks and crosses the water. At night, the brilliant white ribbon of racetrack throws the rest of the surroundings into darkness. Unlike a Le Mans car, there are no headlights in F1.

Just over 1,600 lights are needed for the job, which got underway in mid-June. They’re LED now, a switch made in 2023 that cut energy consumption by a noticeable 30 percent. The light itself is even carefully tuned—a color of 5,700 K and a color rendering index of 90 best replicate daylight for the drivers. Oh, and there can’t be any flickering that could affect the TV broadcast. The results look spectacular, especially in 4K.

As for the racing this year? Perhaps not so much. Past Singaporean Grands Prix have tended to be action-packed—or even chaotic. In the inaugural 2008 race, Red Bull came away convinced that electromagnetic interference from an underground train line caused the failure of one of its race cars, as well as a sister car belonging to the team we now call Racing Bulls. Other teams remained worried about this phenomenon as late as 2015, although no similar failures had been recorded. For the record, Singapore’s Land Transit Authority says there was no train track below the relevant corner of the circuit—the nearest train tunnel is more than 600 feet away (200 m) and 32 feet (10 m) below ground level.

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