Formula 1 will make history this weekend when the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix becomes the first race in the sport's 58-year history to be held after dark.
The top flight's second of four Far Eastern appearances of the season – and round 14 of the 18-meeting calendar – is being hailed as one of its most significant landmarks ever, as 20
F1 drivers and cars will take to the challenging Marina Bay Street Circuit under floodlights in what is being billed as a real venture into the unknown. And whichever of them crosses the chequered flag first after 61 laps of competitive action on Sunday will take away a little bit of history to boot.
World Championship leader
Lewis Hamilton is hoping that man will be him, and the McLaren-Mercedes star has an extra incentive to go for glory in the city-state, after the
FIA International Court of Appeal controversially threw out his team's effort to get the British star re-instated as the winner of the Belgian Grand Prix earlier this month – a race in which Hamilton triumphed on-the-road, but was subsequently penalised 25 seconds and demoted to third place after stewards deemed he had gained an unfair advantage by cutting across the grass at the Bus-Stop chicane during his frantic closing laps scrap with
Ferrari adversary
Kimi Raikkonen.
Looking towards Singapore, however, Hamilton does possess two advantages over chief title rival
Felipe Massa. To begin with, he has been near-peerless in the rain this season – and wet weather is seen as almost a given over the course of the weekend – and secondly, he is sure to have the uncompromising support of team-mate
Heikki Kovalainen as he endeavours to lift the drivers' world championship laurels having come so agonisingly close twelve months earlier, at the end of what was incredibly only his rookie campaign in the top flight.
![Singapore's Esplanade Skyline at night [Pic credit: Kenny Pek, Piccom]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/393304.jpg)
