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Top 12 SingTel Grid Girls unveiled

The top Grid Girl this year will get to win $10,000. (Yahoo!)
The top Grid Girl this year will get to win $10,000. (Yahoo!)

Out of a record number of applicants, 12 ladies have been chosen to be the Top 12 Singtel Grid Girls for the 2011 Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix.

Unveiled to the public on Thursday, the girls are the tallest in the history of the competition, averaging a height of 1.7m.

They will be among more than 50 SingTel Grid Girls who will hold the national flag of each Formula 1 driver and his car number on race day.

Picked out of 500 initial applicants, the chosen ones hail mainly from Singapore, but some are from Thailand, Taiwan and Mongolia.

This is not the first time that foreign-born girls have participated in the competition. Last year a Thai featured in the Top 12 as well.

The Thai contestant this year, Srirada, 20, who has been studying in Singapore for five years, is looking forward to the competition.

The former Raffles Junior College student who is waiting to study Economics and Accountancy at the University of London, said that her mother initially objected to it because it was so close to the start of university, but she convinced the latter that it "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity that she could not miss.

Another foreign-born contestant, Mio, who is half-Taiwanese and half-Thai, feels that her background helps her to meet many people and has allowed her to adapted quickly to the local culture here.

Having been studying in Singapore since she was 12, the youngest contestant at 18 said: "When I first came to Singapore, I tried eating Indian curry and I liked it!"

Patrick Lim, Singtel's project manager, said, "These girls represent the multiculturalism that you can find in Singapore."

This year, local celebrities Elvin Ng and Rebecca Lim went to universities and even scoured clubs like Butter Factory and Zouk to find potential candidates.

And the winner, whom the public can vote for through Facebook or SMS, will get to win $10,000 and a chance to be on the starting grid.