“Difficult” was a word that featured more than once in today’s official Scuderia Ferrari team press release, after Kimi Raikkonen ended the first day in Singapore on Friday fourteenth fastest, with Giancarlo Fisichella two places behind his team-mate. In this final phase of the season, the pecking order among the ten teams seems to depend on which of them is keen to pursue development of their 2009 cars and which have opted to concentrate on next year. Ferrari fits into the latter group. Nevertheless, Friday times are not an accurate guide to performance and that is especially true at circuits where the track surface is very “green.” As a once-a-year track, the Marina circuit will take time to give some grip for the tyres to work with, so today should see an improvement when the final free practice session gets underway at seven in the evening.

At least both Ferrari drivers managed to avoid making contact with the barriers which, this being a street circuit, are an ever present threat. Sebastian Vettel ended up fastest for Red Bull, ahead of last year’s winner, Fernando Alonso in the Renault. In third place, Heikki Kovalainen in the McLaren was the only other driver to get under the 1m 49 second barrier. Nick Heidfeld was fourth for BMW, with championship leader, Jenson Button, fifth for Brawn. Sixth place went to Mark Webber, but it was not a great day for the Australian Red Bull driver, as he crashed in FP3, bringing out the red flag, that rather interrupted the Scuderia’s own programme in terms of upsetting it’s long run testing, essential to evaluate tyre performance over a distance.

Although this is the second time the F1 circus has come to Singapore, the first sight of the cars rushing around this challenging circuit, under the glare of hundreds of floodlights, is as impressive as ever.

From the night in Singapore to the afternoon in Sao Paulo and progress of Felipe Massa’s health. During the FIA press conference just before midnight Team Principal Stefano Domenicali answered a question concerning the Brazilian’s health: "Felipe makes steady progress: he started a programme of physical exercise and preparations to drive. The next step will be the simulator and then he can drive a kart. When he can get back behind the wheel of a Formula 1 single-seater, we’ll decide when the next steps have been completed." Ferrari also added in a statement issued last night: "A definite timeline has not yet been set. Every step has to be taken without any rush and Felipe has all the time necessary. What’s for sure is that Felipe will be ready for the start of the 2010 season, as has been underlined several times, the last time just last night in Madrid, by Ferrari Chairman Luca di Montezemolo."

“Clearly, when evaluating today’s free practice times, one has to consider the various unknown factors, but it is equally clear that our situation looks pretty difficult,” continued Domenicali tuning his attention to matters on track after the day's two practice sessions. “Besides, if so many other teams continue to bring significant technical updates to the track, while for the past two months we have frozen the development of the F60, then we can expect to find ourselves in this situation. All the same, we must now concentrate on ourselves and try and make the most of the package we have, as indeed we have done in the past few races: if we do a good job, we have seen that the results can follow.”