20/09/2024
NEWS STORY
Scuderia Ferrari HP enjoyed a productive Friday in the heat and humidity of the Marina Bay Street Circuit, which hosted the first two hours of free practice for the Singapore Grand Prix, the 18th round of the Formula 1 World Championship.
Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were always front runners, first and third in the first session and second and third in the evening one, held under floodlights. The SF-24 performed well with both drivers who evaluated all three Pirelli compounds, as they worked in both qualifying and race trim.
The cars went out on track for the first session at 17.30 with Charles and Carlos each running a set of Hards while they refamiliarized themselves with the track. They then pitted to switch to Soft tyres, improving their times to 1'31"763 for Charles, the best lap of the session, while the Spaniard managed a 1'31"952, good enough for third. In the latter part of the session, both drivers reverted to the tyres used at the start, running a heavy fuel load. Charles completed 26 laps, Carlos 27 for a team total of 53.
The session got underway at 21.00 with the track floodlights turned on, as Charles and Carlos set off on Medium tyres before switching to Softs with which Leclerc went second quickest in 1'30"785 and Carlos posted the third best time of 1'31"356. With half the session remaining they both went back to the Medium tyres used at the start, taking on a heavier fuel load to run in race trim. Leclerc did 28 laps and Sainz did 27, for a total of 55 laps.
Overnight, with the teams still at work on European time, to avoid jet lag, the team will analyse all today's data to ensure it gets all the performance out of the SF-24 package, especially with an eye on qualifying, which is so important at this track. Tomorrow's grid deciding session takes place at 21.00 local time (15.00 CEST) after the third and final hour of free practice at 17.30 (11.30 CEST).
Charles Leclerc: The car felt good, but there's still some work ahead of us to get it to feel exactly as I want it to. It was a good starting point, now we have to find the right balance and put it all together in qualifying tomorrow.
The weather forecast for the rest of the weekend is changeable, so we will have to adapt very quickly. I would be surprised to see the same gap behind us again tomorrow, it will be interesting to see if the pecking order will change.
Carlos Sainz: It's been a challenging start to the weekend to be honest. Already in FP1 I could feel there was something not quite right with the brakes and we seemed to carry that into FP2, so I struggled to get the most out of the two sessions.
Other than that, the car seems to be in a good window. I'm confident that we can figure out what happened today and make a big step tomorrow.
Check out our Friday gallery from Marina Bay here.