Singapore GP Free Practice: Sainz and Leclerc light up Friday at Marina Bay!

(Cover picture: Pirelli Motorsport)

Like every Friday, the first two free practice sessions give us the opportunity to clarify our ideas regarding the performance levels among each team. Below you can find the final classifications of FP1 and FP2, which we'll immediately analyze.

Ferrari surprisingly ahead of everyone on a high-downforce track!

The first surprise, no need to go around it, is finding the two Ferraris of Leclerc and Sainz at the top of the timesheets in both the morning and afternoon sessions, with the latter held under the artificial lighting of the Marina Bay facility.

"This was probably our best Friday since the start of the season, a little unexpected on this kind of track, but we did a good job. However, qualifying is tomorrow, not today, and it will be very much a question of preparation and management of the tyres. In any case it's always better to start from these positions than in the middle of the group!"

Frederic Vasseur

Despite the difference in conditions - both environmental and track evolution-wise - we were able to observe a similar behaviour from the SF-23, very stable under braking and hardly prone to understeer. Racing on a very high downforce track clearly stresses the car of the Maranello team much less than tracks with long corners: that's where the problems of the single-seater emerge, and at Marina Bay corners like these are pretty uncommon.

Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

In addition to this, having run the FP2 session at night (from which we will draw most of our conclusions, as rhe qualifying and the race will be held in these conditions) allowed us to observe many sparks as the two SF-23s passed by... Even though the road surface is very bumpy in some areas, it was interesting to note how the sparks appeared on a regular basis on the straights: this, in my opinion, states that some porpoising was occurring on the two Ferraris in those situations.

Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Unlike other occasions, however, this phenomenon isn't to be considered fully negative, as it indicates that the Ferrari engineers immediately found a setup with ride heights that guarantee the best possible compromise between downforce and (inevitably) porpoising... Even in Monza, last time out, we had seen something similar at Ferrari...

Mercedes-powered cars with similar performance: can McLaren stand out?

Behind Sainz and Leclerc we find, within a few tenths, the two Mercedes of Russell (P3) and Hamilton (P5), together with the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso (P4) and the McLaren of Lando Norris (P6).

Jake Grant / Motorsport Images

Although the performances of all these Mercedes-powered cars were similar - only Williams was missing in that group, but it was suspected here in Singapore - I expect that the McLaren driven by Norris could have something more in terms of qualifying trim compared to the above-mentioned opponents. In fact, the Englishman followed a run plan that made his Friday a bit out of sync compared to Mercedes and Aston Martin, so a first rough analysis of his laptimes set on different compound tyres makes me think that Lando didn't extracted the maximum performance from the Softs used halfway through FP2.

Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Hamilton and (even more) Alonso showed that they can hold a faster race pace than the two McLarens, although even in this case surprises cannot be ruled out when everyone will lap on equal terms. A fundamental aspect to point out, and which we will return to talking about Red Bull, is that the Singapore track is historically adverse to overtaking, so the result that everyone will be able to achieve in qualifying takes on greater importance than elsewhere: we aren't of course talking about Monaco, but we're not too far from such a scenario either...

"I think that like in Monza, Ferrari is out of reach for us again. Red Bull, on the other hand, will be fast tomorrow, when is needed! So it's very close, you can be fifth or sixth or maybe end up outside Q3. Within two tenths there are a lot of cars, so it will be very difficult. We have to be ready to do a good lap in Q2 and Q3"

Fernando Alonso

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Therefore, it appears clear that having a car with a more competitive race pace compared to a rival team can be of little use if you are forced to stay behind the latter in turbulent air... In a race scenario like the one described, overtaking opportunities can easily be limited to the use of different strategies or some element of unpredictability (mainly Safety Cars or Virtual Safety Cars).

Why does Red Bull seem in trouble? Can Verstappen and Perez recover some positions?

The negative surprise of today's free practices is, for once, Red Bull. The English-Austrian team appeared to struggle through the corners of Singapore, especially in their qualifying simulation on Soft tyres: at that moment we saw the RB19s having little grip like never before in this season, both in the hands of Verstappen and in those of Perez.

Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Trying to understand the reason for this lack of grip is not easy, especially if you consider that the RB19 stood out throughout 2023 as an all-round car, capable of performing both on tracks that rewarded high aerodynamic downforce and on those - see Monza - who instead preferred aerodynamic efficiency.

The only environmental condition that had proven capable of weakening Red Bull, so far, had been the low temperatures of Australia and Canada (races in which, for the record, Verstappen had still won but with a smaller margin over his rivals). But today in Singapore, even in the night session, the temperatures were always above 30°C... The explanation, evidently, must lie elsewhere: could it be a wrong setup?

"The result obtained isn't what we expected today, we struggled a lot with the balance of the car. In FP2 we tried some things that worked and others that didn't, but we were never able to put everything together. We will try to improve, but the the gap is big [...] The Ferraris are very fast, but we are the ones who are not where we expected..."

Max Verstappen

"We expected Ferrari to be very strong here, but we are too far away. We hope that tomorrow we will be able to recover, but I expect a rather difficult challenge [...] We suffered a lot on the rear end, especially in FP2, so there are many aspects to delve into: we hope to find a good setup for the race, knowing that qualifying is very important here"

Sergio Perez

We'll have confirmation already tomorrow morning in FP3: if the RB19s will afford to run with lower ride heights without compromising the overall balance, the lack of rear grip exposed by Perez will become only a bad memory, and we'll be able to put aside the difficulties of Friday as due to an incorrect setup; in the opposite case, it's plausible that for the first time in the season the winner will not be wearing a Red Bull suit...

Race pace analysis: what to expect from the 62 laps of the Sunday race at Marina Bay?

We conclude our Friday analysis by talking about the race pace simulations carried out at the end of FP2 by each team. These are the laptimes set in the long runs, with the tyre compound in brackets:

  • Alonso (M): 1'37"869 - 1'38"634 - 1'37"902 - 1'38"429 - 1'38"115 - 1'38"170 - 1'38"246 - 1'38 "560 (Average pace: 1'38"2);
  • Perez (M): 1'38"078 - 1'38"428 - 1'38"282 - 1'38"049 - 1'38"259 (Average pace: 1'38"2);
  • Norris (S): 1'38"031 - 1'37"879 - 1'38"341 - 1'37"894 - 1'38"675 (Average pace: 1'38"2);
  • Hamilton (M): 1'38"535 - 1'38"422 - 1'38"191 - 1'38"292 - 1'38"224 - 1'38"113 - 1'38"973 - 1'38 "339 (Average pace: 1'38"4);
  • Sainz (M): 1'38"780 - 1'38"559 - 1'38"574 - 1'38"233 - 1'38"099 - 1'38"091 - 1'38"385 - 1'38 "825 - 1'38"510 (Average pace: 1'38"5);
  • Russell (M): 1'38"214 - 1'37"761 - 1'38"386 - 1'38"600 - 1'38"576 - 1'38"600 - 1'39"138 (Average pace: 1'38"5);
  • Stroll (M): 1'38"437 - 1'38"202 - 1'38"464 - 1'38"817 (Average pace: 1'38"5);
  • Verstappen (M): 1'38"221 - 1'38"330 - 1'38"567 - 1'38"579 - 1'38"649 - 1'39"165 (Average pace: 1'38"6) ;
  • Leclerc (M): 1'38"122 - 1'38"239 - 1'38"091 - 1'38"883 - 1'38"472 - 1'38"978 - 1'39"368 - 1'39 "155 (Average pace: 1'38"7);

Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

As can be seen from the laptimes shown, there are no significant differences between the 5 best single-seaters at the moment (Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes, Aston Martin and McLaren): the only pattern that can be drawn, beyond the discussion already addressed on the need to have a decidedly superior pace than the opponents to fulfill any overtaking ambition in the race, is that the two Ferraris suffer from higher tyre degradation than the others. But, without repeating ourselves, if there's a track on which this deficiency can be addressed, it's precisely the one of Marina Bay. Let's wait and see...

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