After Scuderia Toro Rosso team manager Massimo Rivola attended the recent MotoGP night race at Qatar’s Losail International Circuit he expressed concern over scheduling of F1’s first night event in Singapore.
Under the original schedule there would only have been one and a half hours of running in the dark before the night time qualifying session on Saturday.
He told autosport.com after that experience: “Personally I am not relaxed, let me put it like this. Honestly, I would like to test but it is not possible and too expensive to realise. I am sure it will be fine in the end, but there are still some points to discuss.
“The most important is that our schedule should be all over the night, rather than split between day and the night. The sunset in Singapore is at 7pm and at the moment the plan is to have first practice finish at 6pm and second practice to start at 8pm.”
Rivola’s concerns were reviewed by the F1 teams and the FIA with the resulting change in schedule and F1 teams were informed about the latest version of the timetable in Turkey last weekend
The new schedule is as follows:
Practice 1 Friday 19:00-20:30
Practice 2 Friday: 21:30-23:00
Practice 3 Saturday 19:00-20:00
Qualifying Saturday: 22:00-23:00
Race Sunday: 20:00
Autosport also understands that the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA) is pushing for some kind of acclimatisation session on the track on the Thursday before the race – although whether this is in F1 cars or other machinery is not yet known.
Cross Posted @ Full Throttle
Technorati Tags: Formula One, Losail International Circuit, Motorsport, Sports, Scuderia Toro Rosso, Auto Racing, Singapore Grand Prix, F1 Rage, Asian Motor Sports
Tags: Asian Motor Sports, Auto Racing, F1 Rage, Formula One, Losail International Circuit, Motorsport, Qatar, Scuderia Toro Rosso, Singapore Grand Prix, Sports
F1Wolf wrote,
the only problem I have with this new schedule is that we will not be able to start partying until very late … on the other hand, we will have much more time to recover next day before the F1 program resumes
Link | May 13th, 2008 at 4:33 am
Rage-in-Chief wrote,
Come on Wolf, you know Wanchi goes hard ’til daybreak!
Link | May 13th, 2008 at 5:27 am