The amazing race

One of the most incredible things about Formula One racing is, despite the high stakes and all the multiple safeguards in place, tens of millions of dollars can literally be lost over the malfunction of a two dollar screw. Or in more embarrassing examples, the collective work of around 700 people can go up in smoke by the carelessness of just one. In our case, it was our concierge, who just happened to be the hospitality industry’s equivalent of the McLaren pit crew member that forgot to bolt on Jenson’s wheel in Silverstone. Allow me to explain.

Last week, a colleague and I were flying back home from the global launch of the all-new Ford Ranger in Australia. We were told well ahead of time that all connecting flights from Singapore to Manila were full and that they couldn’t get us on a plane until Monday the 26th. The airline were very apologetic when they said that this meant having to spend Sunday night in Singapore – even if it just happened to be at the same time of the grand prix. We did our best to appear upset, of course, even if there were some major fist pumps and high fives in private.

As it was too late to apply for our press credentials, I immediately fired off an email to the Singapore GP folks who were awesome enough to cough up a pair of grandstand tickets for us. Problem was, we were scheduled to land in Changi airport at 5:45pm, which basically meant that we had to move at qualifying speed to clear immigration, customs and all the other traveler chicanes you need to go through in airports, grab a cab, check in to our hotel, pick up our tickets, grab another cab to the track, and then take the 20-30 minute hike to our seats – which, even assuming that there were no delays with the flights, would no doubt end up being a grandstand finish at best.

Red Rock to the rescue.

Sensing danger for a fellow fan, William Herrera, the VP of the boutique travel agency that has been fulfilling motor sport fantasies for Filipinos for the last 6 years or so, seems to get wind of the problem and volunteers himself to pick up the tickets for us and personally deliver them to our hotel just off Orchard road. All this while he takes care of his largest tour group yet. Bear in mind we are not part of his group, nor have we gotten our tickets from him, yet he still offers.

His selfless gesture promises to cut out at least 30 precious minutes from this challenge. But more importantly, with the tickets left at the hotel in advance, William suggests that we could arrange for a hotel car to bring the tickets to the airport when it picks us up, take us straight to the track, and then deliver our luggage to the hotel after we are dropped off. Pure genius. It was the stuff you expected Ross brawn to come up with – implying that if we couldn’t win with outright speed, we would get there with a clever strategy.

So before leaving Australia, everything was set. William confirms leaving the tickets with the concierge of the Holiday Inn Orchard City Centre, but is concerned that they had no record of our airport pick up and offered to arrange it for us. I assure him that he has done more than enough already and proceed to confirm the hotel car ourselves, this time through the kindness of Ford Philippines’ incredibly helpful, Anika Salceda, who got confirmation numbers of the transport and offered to keep tabs on everything while we were 37,000 feet above sea level.

It was all working out like an A-Team episode until...

While chilling out in the lounge in Adelaide airport waiting to board our flight, firing off the last minute emails and text messages to my “pit crew” in Manila and Singapore, I was approached by a staff member, who said: “Mr. Deakin, there are a couple of immigration police officers outside who would like to have a word with you in private.” Now, I’m not a nervous traveler by any definition of the word, but let me tell you that there are few things in this world that can naturally cure constipation. One is hearing the screaming words “Oh my God!” from the cockpit of a plane, and the other is the sound of your name in the same sentence as “police” while traveling through a foreign airport. This turned out to be nothing more than a case of mistaken identity, but it felt a bit like how I imagined it would for a driver or a team to receive an unannounced visit from the FIA just minutes before the race, suggesting they will impound the car.

With that out of the way, as the Singapore Airlines flight from Adelaide took off, it felt like we had just qualified the car and stuck it on pole, locked it up in Parc Ferme, and were now just killing time before the race. All that could be done had been done; the machinery was all in place, it was simply a matter of turning the key, so to speak, once we touched down in Singapore.

Amazingly, the flight arrived around ten minutes early. We bolted to immigration and were the first in line. Even more incredibly, our luggage was already on the belt. It was perfect. Too perfect.

And sure enough, we had made it from the plane to the receiving area in under twenty minutes, only to wait another 50 minutes for our hotel car who was waiting for us in a separate terminal altogether, as our concierge had managed to mix up Adelaide with Hanoi. Yes, I know, they’re very close, and it is very easy to do. Happens all the time apparently.

After about $50 worth of roaming charges back and forth on the phone with the hotel, the service arrives. Without the tickets. So now we’re booking it down to Orchard city centre at warp speed (by Singapore standards, of course, which is a numbing 92 km/h).

We finally get to the hotel, and you wouldn’t believe it. Aside from charging us twice for the hotel car that was almost an hour late, they claim that no tickets were left for us. I show him William’s message, that included the name of their staff who received them, yet he still denied that any tickets were dropped.

Another 20 minutes of scrambling, and $30-$40 of roaming charges later, a big brown envelope that was sitting in the drawer right in front of him the whole time, magically appears with my name splashed all across the front (in size 3000 font), as well as my room number and other handy identifying info that would have been a dead give away to, well, anyone else. But this was not the time to rant.

Tickets finally in hand, we jump in a cab because the second hotel car that he organized to take us to the track hadn’t showed up yet. We make it there just in the nick of time and are one in celebrating one of the world’s most exciting races. To think this was even before the Grand Prix had started.

My point, which I’ve taken as long to get to as the development time of next year’s Ferrari, is that an event like this is the result of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of components that need to come together perfectly to create a world class show that is seen around the world by millions and millions of people. And this year, the Singapore Grand Prix organizers have outdone themselves – from the reduced lines at food and drink stands, to accessibility, to the fireworks, and of course the world class entertainment poured on at the end.

You’ll never hear a decent F1 driver whine about what he went through to get to the pinnacle of motor sport, but only that he’s grateful that he did. And as annoying as my isolated incident was, given half the chance, I’d do it all over again. Preferably with a different hotel, of course. Because such is the lure of F1; the excitement, the unpredictability, and the sheer joy when you finally make it there. Whether as a driver, or a fan.