This weekend could see Red Bull’s Max Verstappen become the Formula One world champion for the second successive season, but if not he still has the best odds for the title. Friday saw the first free practice session for the Singapore Grand Prix, and the quickest driver in the runout was seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton for Mercedes. The Red Bull driver managed second fastest, with more to come tonight.
Lewis Hamilton topped the charts at FP1 for the Singapore Grand Prix this weekend.
The seven-time champion struggled with the heat in the session as he exclaimed, “hot!” to his team midway through the practice, but that did not stop him from being impressive.
Before the session, Lewis Hamilton had suggested his team might struggle, explaining: “We hope that the car works better here, but it really depends how bumpy it is.
“The bumps often set the car off and upset the car in a lot of instances. Maybe the car will be fine, maybe it won’t. We’re just going to try and have the best weekend with whatever we’re faced with.”
Singapore marked a chance for teams to bring significant updates to their vehicles, with McLaren and Alpine upgrading their designs.
While some teams altered their cars, Charles Leclerc for Ferrari changed his livery with an all-gold race helmet as he attempts to keep birthday boy Max Verstappen from winning his second consecutive F1 championship this Sunday.
The 25-year-old was second fastest, 0.084 seconds behind Hamilton’s time of 1:43.033.
Leclerc was the third quickest, while Red Bull’s Sergio Perez was fourth and Mercedes’ George Russell was fifth fastest ahead of the afternoon session, due to take place under the lights.