F1 Singapore Grand Prix: Are Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes in the fight for pole?
It’s crazy to think that FP1 for the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:F1 Singapore Grand Prix♋ was the first time Lewis Hamilton had topped the timesheets i🔴n any practice, qualifying or race session this year.
Mercedes appear ♛to be in the groove at the Marina Bay Street Circuit d💯espite it being traditionally a tricky one in the hybrid era.
While on the surface, second practice didn’t have the eye-catching times of the first session, Hamilton and 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:George Russell’s qualifying simulations were dis๊rupted by traffic and yellow flags.
Despite Mercedes’ strong start to the weekend, team boss Toto Wolff is remaining cautious, particularly as 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Charles Leclerc and 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Max Verstappen✨ didn’t manage represent⛎ative runs on either low or high fuel.
“I think Red Bull was in a bit of a mess. I don’t know what they’ve done setup wise or something else,” Wolff sa🎶id after FP2. “I thi🐈nk yeah, we can be in the fight.
“Our long run was very competitive versus the Sainz long run, but again we haꦗven’t seen Leclerc or Max.”
Both Hamilton and Russell complained 𓆉about the “ride” quality of the Mercedes W13 because of the circuit’s notoriously bumpy surface.
Wolff added: “Yeah, both said the ride is really poor. The car is too stiff. You can see it also under braking, Turn 7, that our ride is poor until you actually turn into the corners, and the others are still stiff, but it stops at a certain stage w🗹hen they go on the brakes.”
Hamilton plays down his chances: “Still a second down”
The lap 🃏times are looking promising for Mercedes, but Hamilton is still playin🃏g down his chances of taking his first victory since Saudi Arabia last year.
Even though he led𝄹 the way in FP1 and ended the second session 0.4s off the pace, Hamilton reckons Mercedes are “still a second down”, revealing they are suffering from severe bouncing once again.
“It started off well, wasn’t as great in the second session, pretty much like any other weekend I would say,” Hamilton explained. “The car is where it is, we’re bouncing around like crazy, but it doesn’t feel like we’re massively off this weekend, probably still a second down I would 📖say, but got to keep working on it.
“Not much we can do with the bouncing, just as it is, set-up wise George was able to find a little bit more time, think on my side there’s a bit more time on it with a clear lap, think witꦫh the set-up I had I had a lot of locking, we’ll fix it tonight and c💝ome back and give it a better try tomorrow.”
On the other side of the Mercedes garage, Russell was third-quickest but conceded they st🍌ill have “a lot of work to do”.
“It was OK bﷺut there’s definitely a lot of work to do,” Russell said. “Very, very bumpy out there, I think everybody’s strugglꦦing to a degree - we’ve always known that’s been a bit of a weak point with our car.
“Tyres are quite sensitive, I think it’s going to be one of those where if we can absolutely nail it I think there will be a huge amount of lap time we can find in qualify𝐆ing and as we know it’s normally a qualifying race. We’ll stay optimistic and work hard overnight.”
As Wolff allu🃏ded to earlier, Russell isn’t sure we’ve seen the best from either Leclerc or Verstappen yet.
“I need to go through and look at the data because I think Charles did his fastest lap on the medium tyಞre, I don’t know where the Red Bull drivers were," he added. "On paper it looks OK but I’m pretty confident that’s not the full picture.”
With a sꦜharp eye for F1’s controversies and storylines, Connor is the heartbeat of our unbiased repo𝓀rting.
