Verstappen beats Leclerc to Singapore pole as Block 9 doesn't look up
Formula One asked the organisers of a residents' doubles match to move their Tuesday final so it would not overshadow the Singapore Grand Prix, and the organisers refused.
Formula One asked the organisers of a housing-block badminton final to move it so the Singapore Grand Prix would not be overshadowed. The organisers refused. Max Verstappen's pole position was noted, briefly, somewhere near the back.
"...and I told them straight, the Grand Prix is a car race, this is a final," said Desmond Teo, convener of the Block 9 Void Deck Badminton Open, still wearing his net-height measuring tape around his neck like a stole.
Formula One wrote to Teo on Saturday asking him to push Tuesday's doubles final back a week. The letter said the sport feared its Singapore Grand Prix would be "lost in the shadow" of the match. Teo read it twice, folded it into a fan, and used it to dry a sweaty grip.
The final is set for the ground floor of a housing block in Toa Payoh, under a ceiling fan that leans left. Two pairs. One shuttlecock. Nine points to win a game, best of nine games, because the residents' committee voted that way in a meeting that ran until the lights timed out.
This is the big one. Everything else in Singapore this week is a warm-up act with a budget.
The build-up
Scouts who have watched both pairs since the quarter-finals describe a tactical knife fight. The ground-floor pair play a flat, mean, low-net game, built around a backhand drop that dies like a thrown towel. The ninth-floor pair hit everything to the ceiling and dare you to find it among the laundry poles.
Nobody is favoured. Everyone is scared. Teo has arranged nine plastic chairs along the pillar line and expects to turn people away.
"You have to understand the history," said Teo. "In July a shuttlecock went onto a drying rack. Words were said about the rack. Words were said about the shuttlecock. Tuesday settles it, or it never gets settled, and then what, we live like animals?"
Elsewhere in sport
Across town, on a street circuit lit like a shopping mall, a Dutchman called Max Verstappen drove a Red Bull around Marina Bay quicker than anyone else and took pole position for Sunday's Grand Prix. He beat a Ferrari by five-hundredths of a second. He had already won a shorter race earlier in the day, which the sport calls a sprint, which is what a race is when it is in a hurry. The Guardian has the lap times, if you need lap times to sleep.
A British man also crashed out of the sprint on the first lap, walked away, and was reported to be disappointed. Nobody under the leaning fan looked up from the net.
Fine driving, by all accounts. Nobody in Block 9 doubts it. Nobody in Block 9 was asked about it either.
The letter
Formula One's head of calendar logistics, a woman named Pietra Volland who has spent two decades fitting races between monsoons, defended the request. She called it a courtesy. She also called it a plea.
"We bring twenty cars, four hundred tonnes of freight and a floating stage with a pop act on it," said Volland. "On Tuesday night a man in slippers will serve a shuttlecock to his downstairs neighbour and nine people will stop breathing. We cannot compete with that. We know it. We have made our peace. We just asked for one week."
"The Grand Prix is a car race. This is a final." Desmond Teo, convener, Block 9 Void Deck Badminton Open
Teo's reply ran to one line. The final, he wrote, "goes ahead Tuesday, 7.30pm, bring your own water, no durian."
The players
The ground-floor pair declined to speak, which is how you know they are ready. The ninth-floor pair spoke at length, which is how you know they are also ready, in a different way.
"Our whole game is patience," said the ninth-floor pair's self-described captain, who gave his name only as Kelvin and his age only as "old enough for the lift to matter." "We hit it high. We wait. The fan does its work. Sooner or later a man loses his mind under there. I have seen it. I have been that man."
Both pairs have trained since August. The ground-floor pair run stairs. The ninth-floor pair take the stairs down, because the lift smells, and call it the same thing.
Officials and fallout
The residents' committee issued a statement backing Teo. It thanked Formula One for its interest, noted that the void deck is not available for motor racing, and asked spectators not to lean on the fire hose cabinet.
Volland said the sport had considered a counter-offer. "We discussed running the Grand Prix on the void deck itself, between the pillars," she said. "The track is short and the surface is good. The problem is the chairs. Mr Teo will not move the chairs."
She paused. "We may have to look at a Thursday in 2027. Or Monday. Nobody plays on Monday. It is the only gap he left us."
The closing turn
The Grand Prix runs Sunday night under floodlights, with the Dutchman at the front and the Ferraris behind him and the whole thing done by bedtime. Good luck to them. It is a tidy little event and the city will be nice to look at on television.
Tuesday is different. Tuesday is two pairs, nine games, one fan that leans left, and a drying rack that has not forgiven anyone. Teo says the shuttlecock from July will be the match shuttlecock. He keeps it in a biscuit tin.
Asked whether Verstappen might be welcome as a spectator, Teo thought about it longer than he thought about the letter. "Can he serve?" he said. "No? Then he can stand at the back with the other people who can't."
