George Russell topped a busy FP1 for the Singapore Grand Prix, followed by Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris. During the all-important session before we dive into the Sprint Weekend, the usual suspects led the way. But don’t be surprised if we see some surprises during Sprint Qualifying later today.
The One and Only
Singapore Free Practise 1 is usually the least relevant session on the F1 calendar. It is the only session that isn’t run at night for this night race. Therefore the track conditions are very different to the rest of the weekend, making it very hard for the teams to collect useful track and tyre data. Combine this with a very dusty surface on this temporary track meant times were pretty much useless.
But not this year. This is Singapore’s very first Sprint weekend. Sprint Weekends mean only one practise session for the teams to dial in their cars before the action gets serious.
All the cars poured out of the pits as the light went green. They were very eager to gather as much data as possible before Sprint Qualifying. Every single driver hit the track and the lap times started to tumble.
Mercedes Trouble
Coming into the weekend, the big talking point was the Mercedes fall out from the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.
George Russell came into the weekend knowing he will start the race at the back of the grid. His engine failure in Malaysia forced him to take an extra engine outside of his original allocation. To make matters worse, Mercedes weren’t able to bring forward the engine upgrade scheduled for Austin, but he had a fresh engine none-the-less.
George also reverted back to Mercedes’ previous chassis spec as their upgrade didn’t bring the performance effected in Malaysia. However, teammate Kimi Antonelli opted to continue with the upgrade, giving the team good comparison data to get to the bottom of why the upgrades didn’t work as expected.
Laps on Laps on Laps
After 30 mins of running, the Mercedes pair of Antonelli and Russell led the way, followed by Leclerc, Hadjar, Norris, Hamilton, Verstappen. The usual suspects were in the lead with the field spread out by 4 seconds, down to the Cadillac of Perez.
Most drivers had completed double digit laps by half way, using multiple sets of hards tyres, with only the Cadillacs using the mediums. The track was incredibly dusty so the teams didn’t want to waste valuable tyre sets cleaning up the track.
The hard was seen as the sacrificial tyre for practise. Its not expected to be a race tyre, as the soft and mediums are much preferred.
With lots of flow-vis paint present on the cars, the teams were trying to gain as much information possible on how their cars worked around this street circuit, with a few upgrades here and there.
Hulkenberg In Trouble
With 40 minutes gone, Nico Hulkenberg brought out the first VSC of the weekend as his Audi ground to a halt on the pit straight with suspected gearbox issues. He parked it nicely at the end of the pit lane so the delay wasn’t long as the marshals pushed him back towards his garage.
Qualifying Sims Start
With about 15 mins to go, the soft and mediums came out to test qualifying sims. George Russell immediately went a second quicker to go tops of the timesheets with a 1:32.864. With Sprint Qualifying mandating the need to use mediums, the split was even between the teams. Max Verstappen put his Red Bull 6th with a 1:33.690, +0.869 from Russell, the highest medium runner.
While the last runs were taking place, they were interrupted by a yellow flag. That yellow was brought out by Kimi Antonelli going straight on at the bumpy braking zone of Turn 16.
George Leads the Pack
George Russell led the way by 0.198 from Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris in FP1. The top 5 set their fastest times on the softs, while the rest set them on the mediums. Two seconds covered the top 10, which isn’t unexpected as the teams and track lay the rubber for the rest of the weekend.
Join us again for Sprint Qualifying at 1pm GMT where the action will really heat up.
Image Credit: F1 X