The Singapore Grand Prix has looked like a two-horse race from the very first moments of practice.
McLaren and Ferrari started the weekend as favourites. Both cars are well suited to the various extreme demands of Marina Bay — the bumps, the kerbs, the relentlessness of the layout — and both are in good form.
Charles Leclerc topped first practice ahead of Lando Norris by 0.076 seconds. Norris reversed the order in FP2 to lead Leclerc by 0.058 seconds.
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But it was what happened to the rest of the field in FP2 that was most notable.
George Russell was the fastest Mercedes at 0.761 seconds adrift, while Sergio Pérez again led the way for Red Bull Racing 0.871s down.
No-one was within half a second of the leading two.
Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri will surely close the gap to their teammates on Friday. Sainz suffered a brake imbalance all day, the absence of which would surely move him up. Piastri admitted he was simply uncomfortable in the car, but the Australian has a reputation for making massive steps forward between Friday and Saturday.
But even then, it’ll be hard to close what’s effectively a day’s head start for their teammates at the front of the field.
“It just felt good straight away,” Norris said. “To be honest, I think we’re always pretty good at that — I think one of our strengths is just arriving and performing well — but then we tend not to progress as much as some of the other teams.
“We’ll see. It’s going to be close, but I think we’re in a decent position.”
Leclerc, on the other hand, suggested there was more to unlock from his Ferrari.
“It felt good, but there is still some work to be done,” he said. “The car didn’t exactly feel like I wanted so, we still have to try and improve it.
“But it’s been a good Friday, and it’s better to have a good one than a bad one. It’s a good starting point, but we still have to push forward.”
So Singapore is already boiling down to four podium contenders and perhaps only two battling for victory.
What happened to everyone else?
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MERCEDES, RED BULL RACING TRIPPED UP AGAIN?
Singapore is one of Formula 1’s most extreme tracks and has generated some of the sport’s most extreme outcomes relative to the prevailing form guide.
Mercedes was regularly tripped up here during its heyday, unable to match its powerful all-rounder cars to the track’s specific demands.
The same happened to Red Bull Racing last year, when Singapore was the only race it couldn’t win in what would have been a perfect season.
In 2024 it all seems to be happening again, with both teams well off the pace over a single lap and similarly adrift in estimates of race pace.
Race pace simulations
1. McLaren: fastest
2. Ferrari: +0.08 seconds
3. Red Bull Racing: +0.26 seconds
4. Mercedes: +0.42 seconds
5. Williams: +0.82 seconds
6. Aston Martin: +1.30 seconds
7. Haas: +1.36 seconds
8. RB: +1.53 seconds
9. Alpine: +1.64 seconds
10. Sauber: +2.20 seconds
Red Bull Racing’s difficulties are less than they were this time last year. It of course did it homework in the aftermath and has set up the car to be better suited to the track.
But inevitably that comes with compromises, with the car simply lacking performance.
“It’s less of a problem, to be honest,” Max Verstappen said of the track characteristics. “I was not really struggling with the bumps or the kerbs, just general grip.
“It’s quite difficult out there to put a lap together. It’s not looking great at the moment.”
Sergio Pérez, who is again leading the way in this hamstrung car, suggested the team’s struggles were even worse than expected.
It’s bad news for both championships.
Red Bull Racing is already 20 points behind McLaren, and while Singapore always throws up some curve balls, it would appear almost guaranteed to cop a hefty points whack on Sunday.
The question is how far Verstappen finishes behind victory contender Norris, with the drivers title on the edge of becoming a genuine contest.
‘Do something else maybe’ – Max on Dan | 01:14
COULD RB ON FOR A BIG RESULT?
Daniel Ricciardo joked ahead of the weekend that he’d answer speculation about his immediate F1 future by putting his RB on the podium on Sunday.
He may not be as far off as he probably thought at the time.
While Red Bull Racing is simply off the pace, Mercedes is struggling badly. It had one of its worst Fridays of the season and looks like it’s having one of those weekends on which it fails to get a good grasp on its car.
It’s opened the door to RB and Williams as shock contenders for big points.
The podium will likely be locked out by Ferrari and McLaren, but the places behind the top four could be anyone’s game.
Both Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda were inside the top seven in both sessions, with the troubled RB car looking surprisingly at home equipped with maximum downforce.
“We have a decent package here and look competitive,” said Ricciardo, for whom this could be his last grand prix. “I had a lot of grip today, and the circuit was really fun to drive. Hopefully our pace remains tomorrow going into qualifying.”
Williams’s appearance is slightly less surprising given this track doesn’t punish drag and weight like traditional circuits do, minimising the penalty brought by the car’s two biggest weaknesses.
While both appear a little way off on race pace, that won’t necessarily matter here. Qualifying is always king at a street circuit, and both are in range of Mercedes in the top 10.
Both teams will expect Q3 appearances, from where long defensive grinds ahead of faster cars could see both return healthy points hauls.
‘I heard I wouldn’t be in the car!’ | 03:15
McLAREN FORCED TO MAKE WING CHANGE AFTER RIVALS LOBBY
How much flexion is too much flexion?
That’s the esoteric question that’s been occupying minds in the paddock this weekend, particularly among the frontrunning teams.
Now they have an answer, with the FIA asking McLaren to modify its rear wing to comply with rules about flexible bodywork.
The declaration came in response to lobbying by Red Bull Racing and supported by Ferrari — the former having been overtaken by McLaren on the constructors title table and the latter having lost the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in part because of the MCL38’s superior straight-line speed aided by this trick wing.
The issue has been the way McLaren’s rear wing moves at speed.
On-board footage has shown the upper element of the wing flattening when the car hits around 270 kilometres per hour. It was termed by some as ‘mini DRS’ for creating a narrow split in the rear wing, similar to the way the regular DRS system works.
Its effect would be to allow McLaren to run with higher downforce through the corners but then shed drag down the straights, boosting top speed.
According to Auto Motor und Sport, Red Bull Racing has calculated the trick to be worth up to 0.2 seconds per lap, though that would depend heavily on the type of circuit.
It’s important to note here that McLaren hasn’t broken the technical regulations. In fact the wing has been repeatedly declared legal.
Bodywork must be unmoving but in practice that’s not possible at racing speed. Much like an aeroplane wing flying through turbulence, the bodywork must flex, otherwise it would break.
The FIA therefore defines rigidity on whether a piece of bodywork can withstand a static load test. If a part can remain fixed when loaded up with a certain weight, it’s considered rigid, no matter if would start flexing under more load than used in the test.
McLaren’s wing has been declared legal repeatedly according to the test.
But it’s clear the rear wing is flexing significantly, and now Red Bull Racing appears to have successfully argued that McLaren has strayed beyond the grey area in the rules because of how much the particular part is moving.
The FIA is in part motivated to act to prevent a spending war on research and development on this sort of aero elasticity given, while legal, it is against the intention of the rules that bodywork must not move.
The directive won’t affect McLaren this weekend given this trick wing is only used at low-downforce tracks. It was last used in Baku last weekend and wasn’t set to be used again until Las Vegas.
It therefore can’t be considered significant in McLaren’s resurgence.
But the fact McLaren has been targeted by rival frontrunners is very much significant of its arrival as an F1 force and the seriousness with which it’s being treated as a threat.
McLaren said in a statement it would voluntarily modify its wing to flex less. The FIA can’t direct a team how to build a car; it can only say whether it thinks a particular part might fall foul of the rules — both the technical regulations and the regular clarification bulletins called ‘technical directives’. It’s then up to the team to decide whether it wants to risk a protest by using that part.
More telling is what McLaren subsequently added: “We would also expect the FIA to have similar conversations with other teams in relation to the compliance of their rear wings”.
What goes around inevitably comes around.
Lewis unimpressed with FIA president | 01:31
F1 SCORES OWN-GOAL OVER F-BOMB SAGA
Formula 1 sometimes appears uniquely adept at shooting itself in the foot at the least opportune of times.
The sport is enjoying an unexpectedly thrilling season, with at least one and possibly both championships up for grabs and with four teams competing for victory on any given weekend.
Singapore, one of the sports blue-ribband and most iconic events, should only have generated positive news.
But the FIA just has this habit of loading its gun and firing it directly down.
FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem already started the week controversially by declaring F1 drivers must watch their language lest they be mistaken be rappers in a bizarre and rightly criticised analogy that served no-one well.
Incredibly that unedifying saga has continued into a second day, with Verstappen hauled before the stewards to answer to charges of ‘misconduct’.
The FIA defines misconduct as “the general use of language (written or verbal), gesture and/or sign that is offensive, insulting, coarse, rude or abusive and might reasonably be expected or be perceived to be coarse or rude or to cause offence, humiliation or to be inappropriate”.
Verstappen’s crime was a single comment at the Thursday press conference.
“As soon as I went into qualifying, I knew the car was f***ed,” he said.
Remarkably the stewards required 391 words to dispatch the issue, ruling that the Dutchman must “accomplish some work of public interest”.
The stewards noted that English isn’t Verstappen’s first language and that his “coarse, rude” words weren’t directed at anyone.
Verstappen didn’t need to swear at the press conference, and the FIA would have been completely in the right to ask him to mind his language.
But to blow up the use of a six-letter word into a formal investigation and a community service order makes everyone look silly.
This is the pinnacle of motorsport. These are the best drivers in the world. They’re competing for racing’s biggest prize.
Most importantly, they’re all adults.
Sending Verstappen to the naughty corner is unbecoming, and rather than having its intended effect, it serves only to make Ben Sulayem’s administration — which appears otherwise to be well meaning and have fine intentions — look totally out of touch through another episode of overreach.
‘Car was f***, what are we 5-year-olds’ | 00:49
MAGNUSSEN READY TO ‘F*** SHIT UP’ ON F1 RETURN
Kevin Magnussen was back in his Haas car for the first time since the Italian Grand Prix, finishing the day a decent 13th in a tight midfield pack.
The Dane had been suspended from Azerbaijan as the first driver in Formula 1 history to accumulate 12 penalty points on his superlicence, a most inauspicious honour.
The incident that tipped him over the edge was innocuous — banging wheels with Pierre Gasly, with neither driver picking up damage and Gasly’s race unaffected.
It incensed Magnussen at the time, and the week off hasn’t mellowed him.
“My own opinion is it’s not a great situation for F1, I think, to restrict racing in that way,” he said, per Racer. “It feels bad when the sport you love so much changes in a way you don’t appreciate.
“I like hard racing, and I think that’s a big part of the beauty of motorsport — the battles. The on-the-limit-and-slightly-over, that balance between going slightly over and under the limit is what makes your race.
“At the moment it feels like they’re punishing ridiculous things. Personally, as a Formula 1 fan, I’d like to see the sport open up again and allowing the great racing that can be seen on-track.”
Magnussen was also incredulous that, despite his 12 penalty points effectively declaring him a dangerous driver warranting a ban, he’ll race in Singapore with his licence wiped clean.
With only seven grand prix likely remaining in his career, he promised to make the most of his suddenly long leash.
“I don’t think it’s going to change anything. In that moment in Monza, in all the battles I’ve had, I’ve never found myself thinking, ‘Oh, I need to be careful here otherwise I get a race ban’,” he said.
“In those races before Baku, before the race ban, I didn’t think about it.
“You get punished, and then you come back, and you’re like all ready to f*** shit up now! It’s funny how that works.”
Magnussen has never needed an invitation to get his elbows out.
With nothing on the line, these could be some of his most spectacular performances yet.
Source Agencies
