Singapore, 19 September – It’s the seventh year of the Singapore Grand Prix but the Marina Bay experience still remains as fresh as ever, when the sun sets with its usual tropical alacrity and the 1,600 floodlights are turned on. The drivers got a few laps running in natural light at the start of FP1 and it will be the same scenario tomorrow for FP3, but the rest of the track action is all run under artificial light, the excitement of the show enhanced by the clarity of the sparks flying off the cars and the flashbulbs bursting in the grandstands.
None of this scene-setting matters to the drivers of course, as they just want to get on with the usual tasks of setting up their cars on what is one of the most demanding circuits of the season, thanks to the heat, the bumpy nature of the track surface, particularly in the first sector and the proximity of the barriers. In general, it was a productive day for the two Ferrari drivers, who between them completed 92 laps, the Spaniard doing 44 and the Finn four more, with Fernando Alonso ending the day second fastest, while Kimi Raikkonen was fourth.
Apart from the brakes overheating on Kimi’s car in FP1, both 90 minute sessions, the second starting just two hours after the end of the first rather than the normal two and a half, ran mainly trouble-free for the two F14Ts and produced reasonable results.


As usual, the teams delayed trying the Supersoft Pirelli Option tyre until the second half of FP2 but its results were dramatic, for all teams in fact, producing a lap time improvement of around 2 seconds over the Soft. However, on a street track the engineers know that everything changes as the track rubbers in, so no final strategy decisions can be made on the basis of today’s sessions.
As usual this year, a Mercedes topped the time sheet, this time it was Lewis Hamilton. Third behind Fernando was Daniel Ricciardo for Red Bull, with his team-mate Sebastian Vettel fifth behind Kimi, the German missing most of the second session as his engine had to be changed. Kevin Magnussen completed the top six for McLaren.