SINGAPORE GP – Oscar Piastri fastest in a chaotic second practice over a tenth ahead of Isack Hadjar
Oscar Piastri was fastest in a chaotic and interrupted second practice for the Singapore Grand Prix; the McLaren driver set a 30.714 to go over a tenth and a quarter ahead of Isack Hadjar. Piastri went fastest at the end of the qualifying simulations, after a red flag where Max Verstappen could only manage third.
As expected, McLaren had better pace in the evening session. Lando Norris looked to go faster on his final qualifying sim, where he was seven thousandths down before aborting the lap in the final sector because of traffic, leaving him in seventh. Verstappen, meanwhile, was two hundredths behind Hadjar as he went two hundredths ahead of Fernando Alonso.
Norris was also involved in a pit lane collision with Charles Leclerc, which is under investigation. His front wing was damaged, but McLaren was able to fix it for the British driver to complete a qualifying simulation where he was fifth but four and three-quarters of a tenth behind Piastri, who leads Norris by twenty-five points in the Drivers’ Championship.
The incident happened when the session resumed, after Liam Lawson stopped at pit entry, bringing out the red flag. The Racing Bull lost the rear of the car on exit of Seventeen then scraped his car along the barrier before coming to rest at the entry to the pit lane and blocking the slip road.
Piastri said, “Here qualifying is a massive part of the weekend. It’s a massive part everywhere, but especially here it’s one of the most important so you’d rather qualify further up and deal with the unknown for the race than qualify further back but know exactly what’s going to happen in the race, because it’s not going to help you.”
Norris shrugged the incident off, saying it “cost the team a bit of money, which is a shame”. Leclerc and Ferrari have been called to the stewards and are likely to be fined for an unsafe release. Piastri, meanwhile, looked confided after his incident-strewn weekend in Baku, in which he crashed in practice and qualifying, jumped the start and then crashed on the first lap of the race.
The Englishman managed to split the two Aston Martin’s as he went quarter of a second faster than Lance Stroll. However the session was very difficult to read as several red and yellow flags interrupted running. Esteban Ocon put his Haas a thousandth ahead of Carlos Sainz and the two Ferrari’s.
Sainz was over a tenth and a half faster than his former teammate Leclerc, with Lewis Hamilton a quarter of a tenth further behind. Hamilton’s fastest time coming on mediums, but the Ferrari’s duo struggled to get back into a rhythm as they looked competitive, before the Mercedes of George Russell crashed.
Going into Turn Sixteen, the Mercedes driver lost the rear and hit the wall. The shattering of his front wing spread debris over the track and brought out the red flag. He described it as “weird,” as he returned to the pit lane.
While the Mercedes crew got to work as Russell’s car went up on the stands in the garage, the rest of the field waited for the session to resume. After a few minutes’ wait, FP2 got back underway with just over half an hour remaining on the clock. Yuki Tsunoda missed out on the top ten after going two tenths behind Hamilton.
Before the red flag, Ferrari looked to be competitive, but when the session restarted they were struggling to find the rhythm and clean air to get the lap in on the soft, which are faster.
Hamilton was happy, he said, “It has generally been a good day, I have enjoyed driving the car. Obviously, McLaren’s very fast and getting a clean lap is not easy but I feel like there’s lots of positives to take from today, lots of learnings and quite happy with the progress we’ve made from session to session.”
The Red Bull driver was just three thousandths faster than Ollie Bearman, who put his Haas a hundredth ahead of Alex Albon. Nico Hulkenberg put himself a hundredth behind the Williams as the German went a quarter of a second faster than his Sauber teammate Gaberiel Bortoleto.
Pierre Gasly was under a tenth and a half faster than Liam Lawson and Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes has always even when they were dominating have struggled in Marina Bay. The Italian was four tenths faster than Franco Colapinto, while Russell’s crash left him last.