OVERHEARD at a hawker centre recently: “You know, this Singapore Formula One is my kind of race.”

“Why?”

“Aiyah, just see who brought it in: Ong Beng Seng. So, the F1 is for Ah Beng, Ah Sengs like me, lah.”

I don’t know what the well-respected hotelier would think of that pun on his name but I think the guy at the hawker centre got it right. The Singapore Grand Prix (GP) looks like a race for the people, held on the very same roads and under the same kind of weather any Singaporean driver experiences every day.

None of those high-tech, designer-built race tracks you see in almost all the other GPs. The expensive cars and even more expensive drivers will have to negotiate the same bends and straights that we do on our way to work every day.

My all-time favourite F1 race is the Monaco GP, touted as “the last street course remaining in the F1 calendar” (not any more now). It is considered the most challenging, because of its narrow, twisting roads.

But what do you expect of a track built long before anyone ever thought of taking the GP to the streets, with normal drivers in mind?

More than that, though, I love watching it because it gives glimpses of Monacan life. When you watch other GPs, all you see is the track, a bit of the pit lane and, if you’re really lucky, an aerial view showing you some countryside. But with the Monaco GP, you get a view of luxury yachts moored by the sea, sunlit cafes and designer shops as the cars flash by. It’s like ESPN meets Discovery Travel and Living.

The Monaco GP is a wonderful advertisement for the tiny country. Hopefully, the Singapore GP will do the same for our tiny country and give it a touch of that old-time glitz and glamour. Cute guys, bikini-clad groupies, fast cars ... what more could anyone ask for?

I was so excited by the news that I made my husband go for a spin the day it was announced. Our route? The proposed GP circuit, of course, starting beside the Singapore Flyer, then zooming past the Esplanade, the Fullerton, the Padang and Suntec City. Okay, not the full track — parts of it have not been built yet — but as close to the real one as possible.

“Isn’t this great? I’m on an F1 track,” I yelled to my husband as we zipped past the Padang, with me trying to imitate Kimi Raikkonen on the straight.

“Erm, I think you need to go a lot faster than 60kmh to get the full F1 experience,” he said.

Yes, well. It was as close to the full experience as I could get, seeing as my car is a 12-year-old clunker and I am chicken when it comes to speeding tickets.

I have one worry, though. Will holding the GP on normal streets create a problem of Ah-Beng-Ah-Seng proportions? I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who wanted to trace the route the moment the news was announced. And, unlike me, these people have much faster cars and are much less worried about speeding fines.

These Ah Beng racers can be quite scary. I almost got into an accident once because two were trying to race with each other along the Padang. It was 2am, I was on the middle lane going at the speed limit, when suddenly, two cars with spoilers higher than my windscreen cut into my path — at the same time.

By the time I’d applied my emergency brake, they were two traffic lights away. Already, Singapore has one of the highest rates of road fatalities among civilised countries. Will having a race track that anyone can access make that figure go up?

I’m sure the Traffic Police have already thought that one through. But if they haven’t, I have a few suggestions to make. First, place lots of removable speed bumps so no one can get beyond the speed limit. Second, set up a special division, the F1 squad, just to patrol the track in unmarked Paganini Zondas.

Now for the important bit: When they catch these Ah Beng racers, they should fine them astronomical amounts. The money should go towards subsidising the GP tickets for law-abiding folk like me.

A race sponsored by Ah Bengs for Ah Sengs. Now that would be a real Ah Beng-Ah Seng race.

Tabitha Wang has a suggestion for conserving energy for the night race: Light the tracks with running blue lights confiscated from Ah Beng race cars.