Ferrari 1-2 in Singapore GP FP2 as Verstappen loses track time

Carlos Sainz led a Ferrari 1-2 in the second Singapore Grand Prix Friday practice session, as Formula 1 championship leader Max Verstappen was limited to just seven laps.

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Key moments:

> Long spells on sidelines for Verstappen, Leclerc, Perez

> Ferraris two tenths apart, but Leclerc should have time in hand

> Gasly’s AlphaTauri catches fire in pitlane

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Verstappen got in just a single short run on hards and a single short run on softs, which left him three and a half tenths off the pace and bottom of the mileage rankings.

Sainz had taken the early lead with a medium-tyre run and reinforced it after switching to softs.

But it looked like team-mate Charles Leclerc – who sat out the first half-hour as his car was being laser-scanned for an unspecified reason – may overtake him late on.

Leclerc was just two tenths off the FP2 benchmark once he finally emerged to lap on mediums, but only managed a very marginal improvement on softs, before being stymied by traffic on his second attempt.

Having bumped against the wall nose-first in FP1 at Turn 11, Mercedes driver George Russell was centimetres away from doing the exact same thing in this session, radioing in with an exasperated “don’t really know why this is consistently happening”.

He then had a major front right lock-up on his main soft-tyre push lap that he described as “awful” – yet it was enough for him to finish third, nearly three tenths up on his FP1 pacesetting team-mate Lewis Hamilton.

Esteban Ocon was best of the rest in sixth place for Alpine, he and team-mate Fernando Alonso split by the Alfa of Valtteri Bottas.

Like Leclerc, Sergio Perez – whose Red Bull RB18 had a driveshaft problem late in FP1 – sat out half of the session, and he then smacked the outside wall during a flying lap when exiting the tunnel at Turn 19.

Yet he completed that lap, made it back to the pits and rejoined the session to ultimately move up to ninth, just ahead of Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll – who smacked the wall in FP1.

Lando Norris caught a fairly major slide in his upgraded McLaren on his fastest lap of the session, which was nonetheless good enough for 11th.

.@yukitsunoda07’s session has come to an end due to a fuel system issue

now to check on @PierreGASLY… pic.twitter.com/shEbGJtZ6t

— Scuderia AlphaTauri (@AlphaTauriF1) September 30, 2022

AlphaTauri had an unfortunate session, in which Yuki Tsunoda was ruled out with nearly 30 minutes to go due to a fuel system issue and Pierre Gasly’s car caught fire.

The bodywork around the airbox on Gasly’s AT01 lit up as he was being pushed back into the pitbox, forcing him to hop out as it got doused with fire extinguisher foam – but he was then back out on track shortly afterwards.

Alex Albon, returning to the Williams cockpit on Friday after appendicitis surgery ruled him out of Monza and triggered a case of respiratory failure, was 16th fastest, over a second quicker than his team-mate Nicholas Latifi who will depart Williams at the end of the year.

Practice 2 Results