Marina Bay Street Circuit

Motorsport track in Singapore

Singapore After Dark at Marina Bay

Singapore's harborside street circuit threads past colonial landmarks and the Singapore Flyer, raced at night beneath some 1,600 floodlights in thick tropical heat.

No other circuit gives a city so complete a guided tour, and none charges its guides so heavily in sweat. The Marina Bay Street Circuit traces the rim of the bay through Singapore's Downtown Core and Kallang. It leaves a pit area that stands beside the Singapore Flyer, slips beneath the Benjamin Sheares Bridge and follows Raffles Boulevard and Nicoll Highway, then passes the Padang and City Hall, crosses Anderson Bridge alongside the Fullerton Hotel and bends by Merlion Park on its way back. Hermann Tilke first proposed the route, and KBR produced the design that was finally built.

Singapore arrived in 2008 with something new to the sport, a Grand Prix run at night, under roughly 1,600 floodlights made to order so that neither drivers nor television cameras suffered from glare. Fernando Alonso and Renault won that first evening. The drivers soon learned how punishing the place is: bumps, tall curbs, tropical heat and humidity, and walls lining a long lap. Lewis Hamilton reckoned it twice as hard as Monaco, and he did not appear to be talking about the scenery. The tight Turn 10 chicane, known as the Singapore Sling, was unpopular from the day it opened; in 2013 a single left hander replaced it, and cars began arriving about 40 kilometers per hour faster.

The track has never stopped evolving. Turns 11 to 13 took a new shape for 2015. For 2023 the twisting run across the floating platform on Marina Bay disappeared, because the platform was being rebuilt as NS Square, and in its place came a straight that follows Raffles Avenue. Today's lap measures 4.927 kilometers. The safety car, meanwhile, became practically a member of the cast, appearing at every Singapore Grand Prix until 2024, when Lando Norris won a race it never interrupted.

Sebastian Vettel has won here five times, more than anyone. After missing 2020 and 2021 the race came back in 2022, and George Russell took the 2025 edition for Mercedes. The 2026 race is set for 11 October. So far Marina Bay has staged 16 championship rounds, from 2008 to 2025, and the city has yet to find a better use for its evenings.

Every Grand Prix here

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