Lewis Hamilton has said that he will be counting on his ability to learn new circuits quickly when he arrives in Singapore in September, after predicting that the new street layout will be one of the toughest challenges of the season.
The
McLaren driver showed in Monaco that he has a special affinity with street circuits, coming back from an emergency pit-stop to replace a punctured tyre to win the blue riband event despite some appalling conditions, but reckons that Singapore, with the added twist of running under floodlights could be even tougher.
"It's difficult to imagine what a night race will be like," the 23-year old Briton told
Reuters during a flying sponsors visit to
Formula One hopeful India, "Then doing it on circuits with brick walls everywhere..... I think it will be very technical, and very tricky for overtaking, with shadows and everything."
The 5.067km circuit, consisting of 13 left-hand turns and ten right-handers, will be the first Formula One street race in Asia, and will be one of only three races on the 2008 calendar to run in an anti-clockwise direction. The layout takes the drivers past many of Singapore's most famous landmarks, all of which will be case into a new light by the decision to run the race at night - another first for
F1 as the category catches up with rivals such as IndyCar and NASCAR.
The entire track will be fitted with nearly 1500 lighting projectors, powered by twelve twin-power generators, in order to produce the 3000lux levels required to illuminate the circuit enough to meet high definition television broadcast standards. As a result, the track will be almost four times brighter than a typical stadium, but the lighting will be installed in such as way as not to dazzle drives as they make their way around the circuit.
Hamilton, who moved back into the lead of the world championship after taking back-to-back victories in Britain and Germany recently, says that pre-race preparation will be key to aiding his learning process.
![Saint Andrews Road in Singapore at night [Pic credit: Kenny Pek, Piccom]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/393305.jpg)
