F1 Singapore Grand Prix: Are Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes in the fight for pole?
It’s crazy to think that FP1 for the 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:F1 Singapore Grand Prix was the first🅘 time Lewis Hamilton had topped the timesheets in any practice, qualifying or race session this year.
Mercedes appear to be in the g🦋roove at the Marina Bay Street Circuit despite 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澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:George Russell’s qualifying simulations were 🗹disrupted by traffic and yellow flags.
Despite Mercedes’ strong start to the weekend, team boss Toto Wolff is remaining cautious, particularly as 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Charles Leclerc and 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Max Verstappen didn’t manage represent🌼ative runs on either low or hi♌gh 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 saidꦛ after FP2. “I think yeah, we can be in th🍃e fight.
“Our long run was very competitive versus t𝄹he Sainz long run, but again we haven’t seen Leclerc or Max.”
Both Hamilton and Russell complained about the “ride” qu💞ality of the Mercedes W13 because of the circuit’s notoriously bumpy surf🥀ace.
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 when 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 playing down his chances of taking his firs🎀t victo🍸ry 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”, revea﷽ling 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,” Hamilto♋n 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 t🌄o 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 with the set-up I had I had a lot of locking, we’ll fix it tonight and come back and give it a better try tomorro🌺w.”
On the other side of the Mercedes garage, Russ🍸ell w🥂as third-quickest but conceded they still have “a lot of work to do”.
“It was OK but there’s definitely a lot of work to do,” Russell said. “Very, very bumpy out there, I think everybody’s struggling to a degree - we’ve always known that’s been a bꦇit of a weak point with our car.
“Tyres are quite sensiti๊ve, 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 qualifying and as we know it’s normally a qualifying race. We’ll stay optimistic and work hard overnight.”
As Wolff alluded to earlier, Russell isn’t sure we’ve seen the best fr𒀰om eith🌜er Leclerc or Verstappen yet.
“I need to go through and look at the data because I think Charles did his fastest lap on the medi𓃲um tyre, I don’t know where the Red Bull drivers were," he added. "On paper it looks OK but I’m prettyౠ confident that’s not the full picture.”
With a sharp eye for F1’s controversies and storylines, Connor is the heartbeat of our unbiased reportin🦩g.
