Before 2008, Formula 1 raced in daylight. Then Singapore switched the lights on. Marina Bay hosted the sport’s first night race that September, and the way that floodlit street circuit lit up a city, and a television audience on the other side of the world, is a big part of why so many night races sit on the calendar today.
It wasn’t only beautiful. That first race had everything: a title fight that wouldn’t be settled until the last corner of the season, Felipe Massa driving out of his pit box with the fuel hose still attached, crashes, spins, and Fernando Alonso winning from 15th on the grid in a race that would later become one of the sport’s darkest scandals. Everything felt heightened, as bright as the lights it raced under.
Marina Bay, 2008
“Real big step in the history of Grand Prix racing… it provides F1 now with a very powerful tool, because effectively we can target anywhere in the world for what time they watch the race.”
Ron DennisMcLaren, 2008
Circuit details from Formula 1.
Singapore has kept that promise ever since, mostly by refusing to behave. From 2008 to 2023, every one of its fourteen races had a safety car. The streets are bumpy, the walls are close, the humidity sits on you like a wet towel, and drivers can lose up to three kilos over a race. Something always gives.
For Mercedes, even in their dominant years, it was the bogey track, the one place the silver cars never quite trusted. In 2015, in a season they otherwise owned, their pace simply vanished there and Sebastian Vettel won. When they did beat it, it usually took something close to magic. In 2017, in the wet, three of the four cars ahead of Lewis Hamilton crashed out on the run to the first corner and he won from fifth. A year later he produced a pole lap that is still talked about as one of the greatest in Formula 1, and won again.
Marina Bay, 2018
“It feels like one of the greatest victories, because it was really our bogey circuit in the past and we were so motivated to do well here and to show we could also perform in Singapore.”
Toto WolffMercedes, 2018
In 2023 it did the same thing to Red Bull. They won every other race that season. At Marina Bay, Carlos Sainz won for Ferrari, Fred Vasseur’s first victory as their team principal, and the streak was over.
Sixteen races, 2008 to 2025, with no race in 2020 or 2021. Vettel also holds the podium record here with eight, one more than Hamilton.
And it has never stopped being strange. In 2015 a man went for a stroll along the edge of the track in the middle of the race. The lizards have made it a habit: one ran across in front of Max Verstappen in practice in 2016, another turned up in 2023, and in 2024 a monitor lizard brought out a red flag in final practice while a marshal chased it across the asphalt. No Singapore preview is complete without paying respects to the sport’s very own Godzilla.
Final practice, 2016Image: Formula 1The last time Formula 1 came here, McLaren sealed their second constructors’ title in a row on a night that began with their two drivers banging wheels on the first lap, and George Russell won the race. This year’s visit comes straight off the wildest race of the season at Sepang, and Singapore is more than capable of following it. It rewards qualifying, makes overtaking hard work, and often looks settled by Saturday night. Then it throws something at you on Sunday.
This year Singapore will throw its curveballs at teams with less preparation than ever. Marina Bay hosts its first sprint weekend, the sixth and last of 2026, which leaves teams one hour of practice before everything counts. On a circuit where drivers usually build towards qualifying session by session, a lot of fans couldn’t see the sense in it. Then Monaco was handed a sprint for 2027, and the direction of travel became obvious. It does raise the stakes, though. Some drivers will tiptoe through the sprint to keep the car in one piece for Sunday. Others, with an hour of running behind them, will find the wall.
The long straights should suit the power Red Bull and Mercedes have shown this year, as long as they can dial their cars in with so little running. Red Bull arrive off their first win of the season and want to keep that feeling going. Ferrari will lean on their cornering speed, and after Sepang they’re arriving with a fight in them. Everyone wants to close out this triple header on a high before the long trip to North America.
After Sepang
“We’ll come back next week fighting. I thought today, as I said, was a chance for us potentially to try and fight Max for the win, but maybe we can do that next week.”
Lewis HamiltonAfter his podium in Malaysia
World champions have won 13 of the 16 races at Marina Bay. Max Verstappen has never been one of them. Mercedes want the top step back. Lando Norris returns to the place where he drove one of the most dominant races of his career. And Lewis Hamilton, who has won here four times, needs one more to draw level with Sebastian Vettel, the old rival who became his friend, and whose records here still stand.
On Sunday the city will switch the lights on as the sun goes down, the cars will roll out into that strange, bright artificial day, and for the 17th time Singapore will glow the way it did on that first night in 2008, when nobody knew yet what racing in the dark would look like.
