More glitzy, more glossy than ever, Singapore shone a thousand lights on the world's most glamorous sport and gave us a unique insight into the eyes of the driver yesterday as Formula One took to the track at night for the first time.

Like a twinkling necklace adorning a beautiful woman, the Marina Bay circuit lit up the spectacular centre of Singapore and then came alive as the world's most sophisticated racing cars hurtled through the streets in the middle of a tropical night.

Although the track has yet to be tested in wet conditions, two sessions of Friday practice for tomorrow's inaugural Singapore Grand Prix - the first starting at 7pm local time, the second ending at 11pm - proved a resounding triumph for the organisers, for the Italian lighting contractors and for Bernie Ecclestone, the sport's ringmaster, who was much in evidence on an historic evening.

The crowds turned out in their thousands to watch as Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa first tiptoed around the twists and turns of an unforgiving track lined by concrete barriers and then, reassured by what they had found, turned up the heat. Soon cars were twitching at full stretch, as if this was a summer's day at Silverstone.

An unexpected gift was the light that was shone into the eyes of the driver, which, on a sunlit day, are hidden in shadow behind the visor. In this way the evening unexpectedly broke through that enduring mystery of Formula One, the private world that only the drivers know inside the helmet; a world we have only seen from the outside, when they seem more robots than men.

The first time we saw through the visor was via the onboard camera on car No22, the gleaming silver McLaren Mercedes of Hamilton, who took to night driving like a natural, running fastest in the first session and second behind Alonso in the Renault in the second. Set just in front of the steering wheel but looking straight back, the camera picked out Hamilton's still, brown eyes moving from apex to apex, steady and true, as he threw his car this way and that. This was seeing him drive from a new perspective.

Among those in the paddock was Damon Hill, the most recent British world champion in Formula One in 1996 and among Hamilton's most ardent admirers. “I saw that,” he said. “It was fascinating to see where he was looking. He looked so calm. I always imagined my expression when I was driving was a look of horror, but he looked pretty relaxed. What was also interesting was that he didn't seem to blink until he went past the start-finish line - it was one blink per lap.”

Down on the pitlane, as the drivers came in at the end of their stints, their heads thrown back by the sudden deceleration, the same trick of the light was evident to the naked eye. Here were the boyish features of Massa in the Ferrari, the only man who can stop Hamilton becoming champion this season, then David Coulthard, the old man of the sport who is four races from retirement, in his Red Bull, and then Alonso, a Spanish warrior desperate for a more potent weapon than his lacklustre French car.

With a drivers’ briefing to attend at midnight, there was not much time for Hamilton to reflect on his first taste of night driving in a racing machine. There are 23 corners to negotiate, many of them of the awkward slow-speed variety, and Hamilton had his work cut out in the heat. “It’s extremely bumpy, it’s a very physical circuit - more than I expected,” he said. “You need to put a lot of work into the car to get a good lap - I’d say double the energy of Monaco over a single lap.”

As for the lights, he had no concerns, like most of his rivals. But the bumps were a worry and they could play a big part in causing errors under pressure in qualifying today and the race tomorrow. Coulthard summed up in his usual no-nonsense way. “It’s like the cobbled streets of Paris and very unforgiving,” the Scot said. “I think there will be a lot of incidents during the race.”

There were few notable moments yesterday, although at least four drivers lost control running through the final corner on to the pit straight. Mark Webber, Coulthard’s teammate, earned the unfortunate distinction of being the first man to crash in Singapore when he piled his car into the barriers on only his fifth lap.

Weather forecast

Today

Scattered thunderstorms, 60 per cent chance of rain, high of 29C (84F) and low of 22C

Tomorrow

Scattered thunderstorms, 50 per cent chance of rain, high of 30C and low of 23C