I was an F1 racer for a few hours last night and my experience can be summarised in a few bullet points:

• Hot
• Glamorous
• Thrilling
• Bruises

Well, okay, it was only a simulated experience, but that’s better than nothing lah.

The fire retardant suit is thick and has no ventilation, so you’ll feel like you’re in a mobile sauna just minutes after being in it.

It also feels quite glamorous because everyone wants to take your photograph so you’re posing endlessly with your helmet in one arm.

Well, I’m not an experienced F1 driver, so I’m not sure how to pose. This classic pose with helmet in arm is the only one I know.

I’m thinking now that real F1 drivers must always be thinking, “Stop taking photographs of me already and let me get out of this crazy sauna suit!!”

I’ll talk about the bruises in a while.

I was at a blogger event organised by SingTel last night to let us try out the F1 simulator.

It’s an awesome machine! It’s like playing a racing game except you’re in a car that moves and rattles and knocks you about when you crash. Well, when you’re driving and not crashing, you can feel the car rumble.

From the driver’s seat, you can see three screens showing your track. There are even side mirrors! How cool!

It was really thrilling and adrenaline-pumping, not to mention violent. Every time I crashed, I got bumped and jolted about in my seat.

It’s really easy to crash if you’re going too fast when you near a corner and don’t slow down in time.

It’s really really really hard to drive this thing! And I look very small in it.

So, anyway, because the seat is hard and I think I’m quite bony, it hurt every time the seat jolted me about. My spine and shoulder blades would bang into the back and sides of the seat.

Trust me, the car can jerk about really violently.

Maybe I should have worn the racing suit when driving, but then I would have sweated buckets into the suit, which would have been quite gross.

So, yeah, I’ve got bruises on my spine and shoulder blades. Well, they’re alright. I bruise easily, anyway. They don’t hurt unless I touch them.

But it was so fun I’d do it again!!

Group shot of the bloggers who attended the event:

By the way, the FI simulators are available to the public at set times. Check this page for more details. You could even take part in the simulator challenge to win tickets to Formula 1 2009!

Thanks, SingTel, for the invite.

And thanks, Claudia, for helping me take most of my photos! ;)