Up Next
Friday running in the humid confines of Singapore suggest that this high-downforce track heavily favours Ferrari and McLaren over Red Bull and Mercedes.
There is a lot of fine-tuning to be done for the latter two teams, both of which were badly struggling for grip and balance. To the extent that Williams and RB look to be on a comparable pace.
It's even more difficult than usual to be definitive about any long-run patterns because there were so many different tyre compounds in use - and because traffic was unusually heavy as everyone was seeking to maximise track time.
Ferrari, Mercedes and Oscar Piastri ran the medium for their race sims. Both Red Bull drivers ran the hards. Lando Norris ran the softs on his McLaren. Charles Leclerc was comfortably fastest of the medium runners but Norris, who appears to be Leclerc's closest rival here on raw pace, made his run on the softs, denying us the comparison.
Long run averages
Leclerc 1m37.369s (medium, 10 laps)
Norris 1m37.458s (soft, 10 laps)
Piastri 1m37.658s (medium, 10 laps)
Hamilton 1m37.860s (medium, 9 laps)
Russell 1m37.862s (medium, 9 laps)
Verstappen 1m37.868s (hard, 7 laps)
Sainz 1m37.913s (medium, 11 laps)
Perez 1m38.632s (hard, 9 laps)
Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri were a little way off their respective team mates on the first day but it would be no surprise to see either or both of them bounce themselves into contention on Saturday after Friday's lessons have been taking on board.
Sainz was suffering with a stubborn brake imbalance through both sessions, so didn't have the confidence required to really push. With that sorted overnight, he can be expected to be quick, as he invariably is around here.
As for Piastri? "I'm just not very comfortable with it at the moment for whatever reason. I didn't feel my lap was great but I've not felt that any of the laps have been great.
"I just need to try and find a little bit more, try and get a bit more comfortable with the car. That’s the first thing - and then really try and find the limit from there. Our pace looks not too bad, we're still somewhere towards the front but obviously the gap to Lando is bigger than it should be so just need to try and find a bit more."
McLaren and Ferrari look set to continue their close Baku contest, Norris heading Leclerc on the qualifying simulations by less than 0.1s, both drivers apparently very much in tune with the circuit and happy to push hard early. Norris' time gain comes with better traction towards the end of the lap, especially out of Turn 14, suggesting Leclerc's tyres may have been over-temperature.
The McLaren has better end-of-straight speeds, though by a relatively small margin. The high-downforce wings run here would not be suitable for McLaren's 'mini-DRS' and this is one of the least drag-sensitive tracks on the calendar anyway. So that controversy was never likely to be of significance in this race, even before McLaren 'volunteered' to tweak its wing flexibility in future.
"I'm feeling good," said Norris. "It was also a nice lap. We're doing what we expect I guess, to be up at the front and up with the Ferrari. But it was a very nice lap and Charles is only like 0.8s [0.058s] behind so I was hoping to have a much bigger gap than what I had honestly, which means they're quick; it means Ferrari are very, very fast but things are going well so far...
"Charles is very good at street circuits. We've seen in Baku, we've seen in Monaco what he's capable of doing. I'm sure he's probably quite happy with his lap. If he wasn't happy with his lap I'm quite worried for tomorrow.
"It was a nice lap for me, not a lot in it honestly so I felt like I got a lot out of Friday. But normally I prefer not being so good and then always having a bit extra going into Saturday, but a good start to the weekend, I think we're in a good place and if we can keep it up then I'll be happy."
Leclerc feels there is more to come. "It was a good starting point," he said. "Now we just need to find the best balance and put it all together for qualifying. The weather forecast is changeable so we will have to adapt very quickly."
It's a close call of which between Mercedes and Red Bull is struggling more. Neither car had a good front end, had a tendency to lock the front brakes, and suffered poor traction.
"The car is just not hooked up around here the same as last year," said George Russell of his Mercedes.
Team-mate Lewis Hamilton was rather bleaker in his outlook after wrestling the car around. "As things stand we won’t be going into Q3. Nothing seems to work with the set-up...ultimately, I think we're just a little bit lost at the moment, not really sure where to put the car."
After the difficulties over the kerbs and bumps of this place last year, Red Bull came with a baseline set-up to help alleviate the worst of that. But that's come at the expense of outright grip, as summarised by Verstappen who was trailing team-mate Sergio Perez again and 1.294s off the ultimate pace.
"It's difficult, just not having the grip that we would like. So a few things to look at," said Verstappen. "I was not really struggling with the bumps or the kerbs. Just general grip, so we have to look at the trade-offs between the two."
Perez was surprised at just how far off the RB20 was around here, on the back of his super-competitive Baku showing. "It's not looking great at the moment," he said. "It has taken us by surprise, so we definitively have some work to do overnight, because we are nearly a second off the pace. We need quite a big change to be able to come through."
Certainly the Williams and RB cars were much better balanced and effective through the tight turns than the Mercedes or Red Bull. That's how things stood on Friday, at least.
