Hamilton, in an interview in some magazine or other (F1 Racing?), said he's never raced at night. I suspect the majority of the field haven't either, as night races aren't very common in the lower formulae.
Well they have got round Monaco alright haven't they? The track has flood lights to light up the track so it shouldn't be to much trouble out there. I have heard that there are only a few places that have good overtaking opportunities.
I am deffently not going to miss this race though, seems like it is going to be a good race. I was reading an article about what Hamilton has said about their training program for this race etc... They are going to stick to the European time zone so they will stay up to the early hours of the morning etc... So their bodies are in good form for the race but they have said it is going to be heard for their bodies not to want to change to local time zone because it will be dark and this light, heat etc... will make their bodies want to change. I haven't explained this very well, I know so here is the link to the article: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/70716
The only single seaters to run at night are oval series, very few F1 drivers have driven them. There's nothing else similar, it is not a night race, like a few F1 drivers may have experienced in guest drives at sports car races.
Still wanting to get the F1 topic Arox so people reply to you and you feel popular?
Its going to be exactly the same as a day time one apart from the sky isn't blue its black. The track will be lit up so brightly the night factor will just be a novelty rather than a challenge.
AFAIK, only two drivers have raced at night: David Coulthard and Sebastien Bourdais. Both of them in Le Mans 24-Hours races:
* Coulthard in 93 in a GT Jaguar but was disqualified (illegal exhaust).
* Bourdais in 99-02 in LMP900 (DNF, 4th, 4th, 10th), 04 (DNF) and 07 (2nd) in LMP1.
(Mark Webber also competed in Le Mans 24-Hours in 99, but his car flipped during practice and didn't race).
The problem I think, will be if there is heavy rain. Floodlights will wreak havoc with the spray. Light rain might be tolerable, but heavy rain would result in red-flagging, IMHO.
It's on Youtube too. Perhaps it's a Red Bull marketing thing, as it shows an RBR car and a STR car going wheel-to-wheel (with the STR car spinning out!).
Massa AND Hamilton for the spin? You know, I'd love to see them do a duel and take each other out. It will make the championship standings look very interesting.
But then that would ruin my F1racemanager.com points too.
The only way that would be interesting is if he is driving James Allen and they do a Matrix and crash into a wall in a massive fireball, thus killing them both in the real world.
Did anyone see the little bit in Autosport that said they are testing helmet cameras in F1? They are only about 10 million years behind the Americans. I remember watching a CART race where they had cameras actually inside the helmets, that gave you a proper drivers view of the track, dirty visor and everything. Hopefully we will actually get these cameras for the BBC broadcasts next year, and not just for people paying Bernie for his special service.
The main reason to have the race at that time isn't the fact that it's a "night race" anyway. It's because the race will be at the same time as most other races for Europeans, the main audience.
The MotoGP night race was quite cool to watch, but it didn't make a huge difference. I think you would have to actually be there for it to be special, but to be honest you might as well just go to some endurance races and save yourself a lot of money.
Slightly off topic, but am I the only one hoping this customer car argument ends up causing Franz Tost to leave Torro Rosso? Why do I want him to leave? Imagine the headline...