The inaugural Singapore Grand Prix and the first Formula One night race is set to take place in less than 3 weeks. Here’s a preview of the night-time lighting of the race track. It’s awfully brightly lit, possibly even better than in the day time, particularly since the lights are focused on the track, eliminating distractions of the city sidewalks.
This will be a big event for Singapore, and it will draw a lot of international attention on us. I certainly hope the organizers will prep the event well so that everything runs smoothly. We don’t need an embarrassment like the Singapore Turf Club opening to a grand blackout. The problem then was probably due to the lack of a proper full-scale IST (integrated systems test).
This is one of my favourite topics. It seems many people don’t know and don’t do proper IST. They are very happy to do individual component test, or make do with lots of simulations. But many problems are only manifested when the entire system is tested as a whole. Even seemingly unrelated components start to interact in odd ways when you test failure conditions in a full integrated systems test.
Last year, we were competing construction of a data centre designed to house racks that can contain up to 20KW of load. For IST, we expected to see 20KW of load in each rack. A conventional oven roasting a turkey produces only about 2KW of heat. So we’re talking about the equivalent of roasting 10 turkeys in each rack. Our contractors were surprised. But in the ensuing testing, we discovered a whole suite of problems that was not expected prior to the testing.
With less than 3 weeks to go, I’m surprised that lots of “construction” of spectator stands and other structures are still incomplete. I do hope they get around to completing everything in time, and have sufficient time to test everything to perfection.
Are you buying a ticket to the Singapore Grand Prix? Some of my friends are going for it, even though the tickets are expensive, because they see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There can only be one “first night-race”. For me, I am too cheap. I rather watch it on TV actually, because the TV cameras will point out the action to me. It’s the same reason why I prefer to watch NDP on TV.
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