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Verstappen excited at prospect of Singapore return

A lot has changed in Max Verstappen's life since his his first eventful appearance in the Singapore Grand prix a year ago.

The teenager lined up in eighth place on the grid in 2015, but his Toro Rosso stalled leaving him a lap down by the time he finally started from the pit lane. Even so, a series of fastest times saw him back on the lead lap just six laps into the race. He memorably ignored an order from the pit wall to let his team mate Carlos Sainz get by, and ended up finishing back in the points.

With his promotion to the Red Bull team earlier this year, the question now is what Verstappen will be able to do this time around - provided that he can avoid a similar bad start in next weekend's race, which he is clearly looking forward to.

"Singapore is definitely one of my favourites," he confirmed. "It’s very challenging, not easy to understand and also the heat makes it even harder.

"I enjoyed it a lot last year so I’m excited to go out there again."

The Singapore street race is unique in many ways, from the high heat and curious 'time shift' schedule through to its spectacular floodlighting.

"Being a night race means it’s a bit different, you have to adapt your braking zone as the light changes from the earlier session to the late ones," Verstappen explained.

"Luckily the time difference isn’t a problem because we are always driving so late, this means we keep our body clocks on the European time zone.

"It’s funny because we go for dinner in the middle of the night, there are people partying while you sit eating.

"The local food looks and smells great but I haven’t got around to trying it yet. In 2015 I ate pretty basic food, I don’t really like fish so I kept it simple with some plain meat. This year I am going to try and sample some local dishes."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.