ADRENALINE has met testosterone on the SingTel Formula One (F1) website.
This, even as the nation is drumming up excitement for the Singapore Grand Prix this weekend.
As early as April this year, fans had already been getting their G-force fix on the SingTel F1 website (www.singtelrace.com); the telco is the F1 title sponsor.
A free downloadable PC race simulation game has given fans a taste of the action in the comfort of their homes.
SingTel Mobile customers have also been playing a mobile racing game on their handsets. (Users dial *319 on their handset to get the free game.)
To date, there has been over 20,000 downloads for the PC version; mobile downloads number 'in the hundreds', a spokesman for the telco said.
There is also an online contest, the SingTel Prediction Challenge, which lets participants pick the winning drivers in the 2008 F1 season - from the Turkish Grand Prix in May to the Singapore Grand Prix.
All they have to do is log on to the SingTel race website at least 60 minutes before each Grand Prix qualification and race and enter the names of the drivers they think will be in the top eight spots.
Participants get points for predicting the eight drivers and their eventual positions.
Five top scorers stand to win prizes worth a total of more than $4,000 at the end of the season.
The grand prize: a replica of the 2008 F1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix Driver's Champion Trophy plus a two-hour exclusive use of the SingTel race car simulator, along with nine guests.
If the winner is a SingTel subscriber, he can stand to win a pair of Pit Grandstand tickets to the 2009 F1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix worth $2,776.
An exclusive SingTel Motorola RAZR V9 Ferrari phone is also up for grabs for one of the top scorers.
If adrenaline isn't enough, the Grid Girl section within the website is bound to raise testosterone levels and make hearts race.
A mosaic of 60 videos of the 20 Grid Girls posing and dancing in sexy outfits is the highlight of the Grid Girl page, launched in July.
Fans can also read the Girls' blogs or leave comments in their chat boxes. Plus, those who take compatibility tests with the girls stand to win F1 tickets and and an Xbox 360.
The Grid Girl Web page was developed and conceptualised by local Web developer Crayon Digital using Microsoft's Silverlight technology.
It was chosen because its compression technology allows all 20 videos to be downloaded much faster than Flash, said the SingTel spokesman.
The key benefits of Silverlight are 'adaptive streaming', for efficient video rendering, and 'deep zoom', for zooming and panning high-resolution images with almost no lag, said Haresh Khoobchandani, director of business and marketing at Microsoft Singapore.
Other Silverlight-powered sites include the NBC's Olympics Web page at www.nbcolympics.com, and the Singapore Government's youth site Adrenaline.sg.
This story first appeared in The Strait Times Digital Life on 24 September, 2008.
