Singapore GP:

Still Work To Do Under the Floodlights

Formula One under the stars and floodlights - that can only mean one thing: we are back at the Marina Bay Street Circuit in Singapore!

The two W15s of Lewis and George shone in a new light under the Singapore floodlights in Friday's practice sessions: to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the team's Title and Technical Partner PETRONAS, the team is running a special livery this weekend, with the iconic emerald green of PETRONAS the predominant colour on the W15.

The team's focus on Friday was on long-run work. George and Lewis finished the day in seventh and eleventh place respectively. The field was relatively tight on the difficult and long street circuit with 11 drivers within a second of each other.

FP2 started, as expected, five degrees cooler than FP1, which was run in daylight. Having run the Hard and Soft tyres in session one, our duo opened FP2 on the Medium compound.

After some minor set-up adjustments, George improved to P3, while Lewis struggled with a weak rear end. After two runs on the Medium compound, both switched to the Softs before finishing the session with a long run on the Medium tyres.

George's session ended with contact with the wall in Turn 8 after a brief moment of understeer. He damaged the front wing but was able to drive the car back to the pits.

George Russell

That was quite a challenging Friday for us. We didn’t have the pace of the frontrunners today and we need to work hard overnight to understand why. The car wasn’t feeling as well connected as it did here last year, or in recent races. We need to get to the bottom of that if we are to have a weekend where we can challenge at the front. I am sure we will find some answers though once we go through all the data this evening.

There were a lot of surprises out there when you looked at the timing screens. Williams and VCARB seemed to be particularly quick compared to recent races, whilst the Red Bulls looked to be struggling a little. The McLarens and the Ferraris looked to have a comfortable advantage over everyone else meanwhile and we’ve clearly got work on our hands to be in with a chance of racing them this weekend.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

That was one of the trickier Friday’s of the year so far. We experimented with different set-ups across the cars in FP1, aiming to try and counter some of the challenges we’d faced particularly on our Medium tyre stint last weekend in Baku. Unfortunately, the track conditions didn’t give us a brilliant read on this, so we converged more closely for FP2. Neither driver was particularly happy with the balance throughout the session, although we made some progress on our long run.

Whilst that second hour of running was more encouraging, we’ve still got a good chunk of work to do overnight. McLaren and Ferrari, in particular Norris and Leclerc, looked to be a step ahead of the rest of the field. We will have to find some big improvements to be in the fight with them tomorrow. We’ve also got one eye on some of the teams behind us. We will need to find gains overnight if we are to have a smoother run through qualifying and that is what we are focused on doing.

2024 Singapore GP FP2 Result

2024 Singapore GP FP1 Result