Lewis ready for Singapore fight whatever Paris throws up.
Lewis Hamilton arrives in Singapore on the back of a turbulent few races, and if his appeal hearing in Paris on Monday is unsuccessful as is befitting the general paddock consensus his championship advantage over Felipe Massa will remain at a mere single point.
The Briton’s performances in the Belgian and Italian grand prix have been up there with some of his finest drives. But his run-ins with Kimi Raikkonen in the former (which resulted in him being stripped of victory) and the Ardenne weather in the latter, have left his championship lead in tatters.
Whatever the outcome in Paris on Monday, Hamilton faces a fierce battle with title rival Massa on the streets of Singapore. The British ace remains unfazed by the challenge of Formula One’s first ever night race though.
“I’ve never raced at night before, but I don’t think it is going to be a problem. It doesn’t seem to be a problem in other sports and there have been huge preparations for this, so I think it will be great.”
“We are racing on another street circuit, which are a particular favourite of mine. From what I understand it is wide and fairly flowing in nature, which is not what you usually expect from a street circuit, but it sounds like it will be pretty spectacular.”
With the race set to start at 2000hrs on Sunday under artificial lighting, the drivers and teams will have to take special measures to adjust to the climate and timetable.
“Our doctor has prepared a very precise schedule for the drivers to stick to because all the sessions are so late in the day,” explains Hamilton. “Essentially we must not acclimatise to the local time, which is totally different to how we normally operate.”
“Our training programmes ensure that over a race weekend we are at peak performance during the afternoons and as a result we are going to be staying in European time so this doesn’t get disrupted.
“Apparently not acclimatising is much harder than adapting, because your body naturally wants to change. For the drivers, our meal, waking and sleeping rhythms will all be in European time, for example we will get up early afternoon for breakfast, have supper at 1am and go to bed at around 3am.
“It will be very different preparation to any other race but we’ll try and do the best job we can.”
