20/09/2013
NEWS STORY
Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton began their Singapore Grand Prix weekend at the Marina Bay Circuit this evening.
The two drivers completed a total of 110 laps today across the two ninety-minute practice sessions. Today's programme centred on tyre evaluations and finding a set-up to allow the drivers to attack the street circuit layout. The removal of the Singapore Sling chicane at Turn 10 has cut approximately 1.5 seconds from low-fuel lap times.
Nico Rosberg: It's great to be back in Singapore although the conditions are incredibly hot out there and it's a tough challenge for the drivers. We had a reasonable day but there is still some work to do this evening as our competitors seem to be very quick again. We will be looking at how we used the tyres this evening and make sure we are on top of potential overheating and degradation on the long runs as there are no long straights here to cool the tyres down.
Lewis Hamilton: It wasn't the perfect Friday for us but we got on with our programme and know where we have to make improvements for tomorrow. The balance of the car felt really good in P1 but it definitely went away from us in P2. There is a lot of work to do this evening but we're used to that on a Friday night and will just get on with it and focus on our car and performance. It's so difficult to overtake around at this circuit that you want to qualify as high up as possible and, of course, aim for the front row but that will be tough. The circuit is much improved here without the chicane and Turn 10 feels like a much nicer corner now.
Ross Brawn: We enjoyed a solid first day of running here in Singapore. In the second session, we didn't quite get our first timed laps together on low fuel but that will come tomorrow, I am sure. Then we completed our usual running on race fuel with both types of tyre. It's hard to know exactly where we stand because there is a high lap time effect for running extra fuel at this circuit, so that can mix the field somewhat. The car seemed reasonably consistent today which has given us a good platform to work from tomorrow.
Toto Wolff: We collected a lot of data about both types of tyre today and now we need to analyse it to find out where we can improve. There are some big gaps on the timesheets but we need to focus on our own programme and not get distracted by what our competitors are doing. Our priority is to extract every possible bit of performance from our package, then we can see where we stand when it counts on Sunday afternoon.
Check out our Friday gallery, here.