Courtesy of Alpine Singapore, we were offered the opportunity to visit the Singapore Grand Prix Paddock. Our visit happened on the day prior to practice day - this is also when the pitlane experience occurs.
While attendees of the pitlane experience will get pretty close to the F1 teams' garages, our invites included a tour of the BWT Alpine's garage as well, allowing us to get up close to the F1 cars and the drivers.
Dinner at the BWT Alpine hospitality suite
Once we enter the F1 Paddock, the first thing I notice is the row of colourful hospitality suites. This is where the bulk of each team is situated - you'll find the engineers, the drivers, as well as various members of the team at the hospitality suite. Additionally, it is also where the team will host the press and sponsors.
Our invite from Alpine Singapore included a dinner and a media interview session with the team's drivers Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon, along with a tour of the BWT Alpine garage.
Dinner at the hospitality suite is an exclusive and enjoyable experience with a three-course dinner prepared by the friendly team. This year's menu included an appetiser with Parma ham and Honeydew, beef for the main course, and a strawberry New-York Cheesecake for dessert. After the pleasant meal, we headed into the garage for the tour.
An exclusive tour of the BWT Alpine F1 garage
Visiting an F1 garage before the race weekend has a surreal vibe to it. We all know how intense and hectic things get during the race, with teams of engineers manning their stations within the garage. But on our visit, the garage is calm, squeaky clean and pretty - in fact, we entered the garage just when the cars were wheeled out for inspection by the FIA.
Chatting with the drivers of BWT Alpine
We were also given the opportunity to have a chat with the drivers as part of our visit. All of us were naturally curious about the challenges that the drivers face on a street circuit such as Singapore.
Both drivers highlighted the physical and technical challenges of the Singapore Grand Prix Street circuit - Singapore's hot and humid climate is something that the drivers must prepare for well before the race; meanwhile, the narrow track with solid barriers makes for a lot less margin of error as compared against traditional tracks.
Seeing the rise of the popularity of e-sports and sim-racing, we've taken the opportunity to find out what the F1 drivers think of it. To this, Pierre Gasly says that he has a simulator at home, which he uses "more for fun, more like an arcade". He doesn't take it as seriously as "some of these guys out there are actually incredibly fast and talented on simulators".
When posed with the question on whether sim-racing's skillset is transferable to actual racing, or is it vastly different, Esteban Ocon replied that "it's very transferrable, I know guys that have done only sim-racing and they come for go-karts or cars and they were very quick straight away."
We ended our chat with a light-hearted question - as F1 drivers who get to pilot the ultimate racing machines, are there any cars that that they would love to drive?
Pierre mentioned that he'd like to try some of the old F1 cars - he had the chance to drive the Toleman TG183B (Ayrton Senna's first F1 car, with a H-pattern shifter), and he found it incredible just how simple the cockpit was. When asked if he found the old F1 car more challenging than the modern cars, he replied that "it's a different driving style, and it would be unfair to say that one is harder than the other - in the past you had less electronics, so your focus will be on one single thing."
Answering the same question, Esteban mentions that he is very passionate about cars, be it classic or new ones. "I think the new Corvette ZR1 is very impressive, it has more than 1,000 horsepower and it looks good". Esteban had seen the car in action at Nurburgring while he was testing the Alpine A110. "I saw it going around, they had this camo type livery, and it looked really impressive, I think that car, I would like to try it sometime."
So, there we have it, if you have a Corvette ZR1 on the way, maybe you could offer Esteban Ocon the opportunity to take it out for a spin?
