Friday practice notes: F1 Singapore GP

If Friday practice is anything to go by, then the Singapore Grand Prix promises to develop into a closely fought weekend between Ferrari and McLaren. Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris were astoundingly close, separated by less than a tenth across two practice sessions.

In Singapore, there is only one truly representative session for the GP: the night-time FP2 is the closest of the three practice hours in terms of track conditions and temperature, giving its equivalent timing to the qualifying and race phases of the weekend. Naturally, the teams wanted to use that opportunity to get some running in — and hoped that none of their drivers suffered an ignominious tangle with the barriers.

The likes of Red Bull and Mercedes dealt with two hours of set-up struggles, while RB surprised with its consistent one-lap pace among the top half of the field. As ever, it’s shaping up to be an intriguing weekend at Marina Bay.

The story of the day

Leclerc delivered the first punch of the weekend with the fastest time in FP1, albeit with a scant 0.076-second advantage over Norris, after managing to improve over three timed laps on a single set of soft tyres. A dusty track surface prompted the majority of the field to conduct their early-session exploration runs on the hards and mediums, although the track evolution was characteristically rapid for a street circuit as the road surface began to take on rubber.

Norris had occupied the top of the leaderboard in the opening soft-tyre runs, but Leclerc was able to overturn that in FP2 to hint that McLaren and Ferrari may be as closely matched as they were a week ago in Baku.

FP2 further reinforced, as Norris outpaced Leclerc by just 0.058 seconds, that the two proved to be a cut above the rest of the grid. Their gap to third-fastest Carlos Sainz stood at over half a second, as the Spaniard put this down to a series of issues with his brakes that sapped his confidence in the lower-speed corners.

While Norris looked rapid on track, he suffered a few wayward moments, including an admission that he “hit the wall pretty hard” at Turn 3, at the start of his longer runs. Leclerc felt that he’d done a similar move at Turn 14, as the closeness of the barriers started to keep the drivers’ growing confidence in check.

Rather than matching Norris for pace, Azerbaijan winner Oscar Piastri was struggling with his initial set-up choices; the Australian went wide at Turn 7 and brushed his right-rear at Turn 17, and could only manage a time within 0.747s of Norris.

In the meantime, Red Bull was perhaps wary of a repeat of 2023, where its bid to win every race of the season came unstuck at the Singapore round with a sudden drop in pace. And the Milton Keynes squad did not look entirely at home this time around either, as Sergio Perez was the best of the RB20s with his run to the eighth-fastest time in FP2. Max Verstappen, for his part, was all the way down in 15th as the flag fell on Friday’s running.

“Charles is only like 0.08 seconds behind. So I was hoping to have a much bigger gap than what I had, honestly, which means they’re quick” Lando Norris

“On Max’s car, nothing is working,” Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko said of the difficulties faced so far. “On both the soft and the hard tyre he doesn’t get any grip and he doesn’t have any balance at all.”

Verstappen concurred, stating that “we didn’t have the grip that we would have liked on the tyres, so I felt like we were sliding a lot more than usual,” he said. “This caused us particular issues in FP2, which wasn’t really a positive session for us.” He reckoned that this was less of an issue with Red Bull’s usual bugbear of kerb-riding, but rather simply a matter of dialling in mechanical grip overall. Perhaps the two are linked, with a set-up choice that eases the limitations of the car in bumps but has less grip overall, but it’s impossible to say without insider knowledge.

Lewis Hamilton faced similar issues, admitting that Mercedes felt “lost” with its set-up choices – despite heavy revisions between FP1 and FP2. That said, George Russell was marginally more optimistic and targeted the gap behind the Ferraris and McLarens for his weekend progress, although the waywardness of his own car was evident in a late tangle with the wall at Turn 8 in FP2. This knocked his front wing off, but caused little other damage.

Despite his late-FP2 wall contact, Russell pointed to Mercedes being a strong bet behind McLaren and Ferrari

Photo by: Lionel Ng / Motorsport Images

McLaren versus Ferrari – but who’s got the race pace?

At this stage, it’s hard to fully gauge where each of the top four teams will shake out as they carried out different tyre work during FP2. Assuming all three tyres will be used in the race, then Ferrari and particularly Leclerc look like a strong bet given his strength on the medium tyre. The Monegasque set the fastest average race run across the session and produced it across a 10-lap stretch on the C4 to beat Norris’ eight-lap soft-tyre run by about a tenth per lap.

In practice, Norris’ tyres suffered a bigger drop-off over the stint versus Leclerc. Again, the two should be evenly matched on a fresh set of the yellow-walled tyres; Norris’ red-walled Pirellis had already been pushed through two qualifying laps at that stage and thus were past their peak.

“I’m feeling good,” Norris said after the session. “It was also a nice lap. I think we’re doing what we expect, to be up with the front and to be up with Ferrari. Charles is only like 0.08 seconds behind. So I was hoping to have a much bigger gap than what I had, honestly, which means they’re quick; means Ferrari are very, very fast. But I think it’s going well so far.”

Piastri showed up well on the medium, albeit about 0.3s a lap slower than Leclerc. The Australian admitted that he struggled to find a rhythm throughout the session, stating that “the pace in the car looks strong, I’ve just not really been able to unlock it that well. We’re still somewhere towards the front, but obviously the gap to Lando is bigger than what it should be.”

The aforementioned lack of comfort can also go some way to explaining Sainz’s lowly stint time relative to Leclerc, but the key reason is that Sainz did not use DRS on his long-run laps while Leclerc did on select tours. This yielded an almost 15km/h (9.3mph) speed difference on the run between Turns 5 and 7, and also marked differences in velocity across the other three DRS zones. But this only affected some of the laps in the data, as Leclerc did not use it all the time.

While Verstappen’s single-lap speed was lacking, his race pace showed signs of recovery for Red Bull in Singapore

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

The Mercedes duo was ultimately not far away from Piastri, although it suggests that there’s more time in the bag if both drivers can be made to feel more comfortable; the nine-lap stints on the medium-grade tyre were almost identical for both Hamilton and Russell.

On the hard tyre, Verstappen was also in the mix, and so his overall race runs must be of some comfort to Red Bull. But this was not entirely where the team had struggled last season, as Verstappen was able to make ground through the race; qualifying position will likely be the main mitigating factor for him. Should he be able to find a better balance for the Saturday night session, then Verstappen should have a decent chance to challenge in the upper reaches of the points. If not, and he suffers a Q2 exit like last year, then he’ll have his work cut out.

“They use this high-pressure water jet treatment on the asphalt, and so I’m not expecting any surprise from the track” Mario Isola

Going into Saturday, the track can be expected to continue to evolve, as the streets become more saturated with the Pirelli tyres running over it. “The grip is still good. It’s quite homogeneous,” Pirelli chief Mario Isola explained during the gap between sessions. “They use this high-pressure water jet treatment on the asphalt, and so I’m not expecting any surprise from the track. We have seen in FP1 that the level of grip is good.”

A little overnight dust may have a part to play, but that will scarcely make much difference as FP3 continues to pass by and the drivers gather more confidence on the challenging course around Marina Bay. And, of course, the heat will start to affect the drivers – perhaps not so much during the practice and qualifying sessions, but during the punishing 62-lap affair in humid conditions. If they pop a teabag in their drinks bottle, it might be a little more palatable…

Who will succeed in this year’s Singapore sizzler?

Photo by: Lionel Ng / Motorsport Images