Fernando
Alonso ended the first night of practice for the
fifteenth round of the World Championship in fourth
place, with his Scuderia Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa
seventh. The three hours of track time were complicated
for everyone by the fact that for the first time in this
event’s short three year history, the cars tackled the
first 90 minutes of free practice on a damp track with
puddles and slippery kerbs making it treacherous,
especially given that as usual on a street track,
run-off areas are in short supply.
Even if this is Formula 1’s third visit to Singapore,
the first time the cars go out on track under the
floodlights is still a breathtaking spectacle, as the
colours on the cars and in the garages look so much
brighter in the artificial light than in the more normal
sunshine. However, night time in Singapore does not see
a significant drop in temperature, nor in the humidity
levels, therefore for the drivers, but especially for
the mechanics working in the garage, where the heat from
the cars’ engine and brakes add to the ambient
temperature, working conditions are very tough. Indeed
the Prancing Horse mechanics had a very busy night time,
as the team evaluated various aero options, including a
comparison running the car with and without the blown
rear wing. Fernando’s second session did not go the full
ninety minutes, because after overshooting a corner and
making use of the escape road, his F10 suffered a
failure of an experimental component in the gearbox, but
as the Spaniard himself pointed out, Fridays are all
about testing new ideas and these things can happen.
At the end of the second session, the Red Bull Racing
duo topped the time sheet, with Sebastian Vettel first,
the only driver to dip under the 1m 47 second barrier,
fastest, ahead of Mark Webber. Jenson Button was third
for McLaren, with his team-mate Lewis Hamilton in fifth
place behind Fernando and ahead of Rubens Barrichello,
sixth for Williams.
“Despite today’s
difficulties, we still managed to acquire sufficient
data which our engineers can now use to decide on the
car set-up for qualifying and the race,” said Stefano
Domenicali. “Friday’s times are always difficult to
evaluate and today was no exception. From the little we
could see, Red Bull look very strong, as indeed was to
be expected, but we are on the pace. Having said that,
clearly we will have to perform faultlessly if we want
to achieve our objective, starting from tomorrow’s
qualifying.”
Fernando Alonso: “I braked a bit late
at turn 18 and ended up in the escape road: I selected
reverse, but when I then selected first gear to get
going again, the car stopped. It’s a shame, because I
lost the final twenty minutes of the session, the part
when I was due to run with a heavy fuel load. In the
debrief, the engineers told me the problem was that an
experimental part in the gearbox had broken. This can
happen on a Friday, when you try a lot of things, some
of them even aimed at next season. Our individual sector
times don’t seem too bad, in fact you could say they
were quite competitive, when compared to our main
rivals. We tried the car with and without the blown rear
wing and for me, the first option seems to be the best,
but we must study the data carefully before taking a
definite decision. The hard tyres proved to be
consistent and the softs give more grip than expected.
This morning, I did not do much running because the
track was not dry enough for slick tyres, while the
intermediates would have quickly been destroyed.”
Felipe Massa: “We did a lot of laps to
try out different configurations on the car, especially
comparing performance with and without the blown rear
wing. I am not particularly pleased with the balance of
the car and that is another reason why we spent a lot of
time on track in the first session, even when track
conditions were not ideal. Especially on the soft tyres,
I had a bit too much oversteer. There is much work to do
but I think we can be competitive all the same, even up
against Red Bull who seem to be very strong. The track
was very slippery when it was still damp, especially the
kerbs and the part that was recently resurfaced. The
hard tyres take a while to get up to temperature, which
is not the case with the soft ones, although these
probably suffer a bit more from degradation.”
Chris Dyer: “Rather a difficult day in
terms of running the programme we had set out for the
two free practice sessions. In the first one, the track
conditions were neither fish nor fowl: the damp track
meant you could not use the dry tyres without the risk
of damaging them, but it was not wet enough to run
properly on the intermediates. In the second session, we
were unable to complete the planned programme on
Fernando’s car, because an experimental component in the
gearbox broke, which was discovered when he went off the
track at turn 18: now we have to take a close look at
the part to determine what caused the breakage. We tried
various new aerodynamic solutions, also comparing the
handling of the car with and without the blown rear
wing: now it is up to the engineers, along with the
drivers, to reach a decision tonight as to which is the
best configuration for qualifying and the race. In terms
of performance, the F10 seems to be reasonably
competitive at this track, even if it is difficult to
draw any definite conclusion, especially when you
consider how the two sessions went. I think the battle
between the top three teams is very tight and that we
can fight for places at the front of the grid.”
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