Singapore Grand Prix: Practice Recap

FP1, held late afternoon, saw MoneyGram Haas F1 Team drivers Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman get their first taste of the 4.927-kilometer (3.061-mile), 19-turn street circuit. Both drivers sampled the Pirelli P Zero White hard tire, followed by the Red soft compound – the latter being the set they compiled their fastest laps on. Ocon clocked a 1:32.128 for P10 with Bearman on a 1:32.538 for P16.

Under the night sky and in the full glare of the myriad of lights lining the track, FP2 ran under conditions representative of Saturday’s qualifying and Sunday’s night race. Ocon and Bearman commenced their second practice plan with a stint on the Yellow medium tire, a red flag stop soon following for debris left on track from the Mercedes of George Russell. New softs were placed on both VF-25s, where Bearman’s fastest time of the session came – a 1:31.711 for P12 – promptly before another red flag followed for the Racing Bull of Liam Lawson, who hit the wall at the penultimate corner. The final 10 minutes of the session saw cars return on their used softs, Ocon producing his quickest time of the session, a 1:31.298 for P7 at the checkered.

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team ran a total of 86 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 – 43 from Ocon and 43 from Bearman.

Ollie Bearman:

“The car seems quick, and we’ve had a good day. FP1 was tricky for me as I was learning the track, but in FP2 I felt like I had a bit more rhythm and could extract more out of the car. The red flags made it tougher as it would’ve been nice to get some high-fuel running in, but even to have less interrupted low-fuel running would’ve been helpful as I’m still finding the rhythm, and it’s tough where there are stoppages, however everyone is in the same boat. When the final red flag came out, it was clear to scrap high-fuel and focus on qualifying pace – it’s important around here – and that seemed the right call, everyone was doing it.”

Esteban Ocon:

“It’s been a very solid day, I’m very happy with it, it’s probably been the best Friday of the year for us. We need to wait and see, we need to keep chasing, as you know with balance and the good grip we had today, normally there are a lot of things that change overnight. Tonight as a team we need to keep the maximum of what we had today, and just make small changes ahead of tomorrow.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

“I think it was a decent Friday. Everyone worked pretty well, we just need to tighten up on some operational things that will be key to execute tomorrow. The car is working well, it’s all about finetuning now – do the basics, pay attention to detail, and focus on executing a good qualifying tomorrow.”