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Reaction to Singapore GP practice
Reaction to Singapore GP practice
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About this episode
Matt and Tommy dive into the Singapore Grand Prix Friday practice sessions, highlighting Fernando Alonso's surprising pace and the challenges posed by the intense heat. They discuss a dramatic pit lane collision between Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris, debating potential penalties and team responsibilities. The hosts analyze crashes involving George Russell and Liam Lawson, and debate whether red flags should stop practice clocks. They also explore Lando Norris's mindset and the McLaren teammates' performances, while teasing the unpredictable qualifying ahead. The episode blends race insights with candid driver observations and the unique demands of Singapore's circuit.
Topics:
singapore grand prix
practice sessions
fernando alonso performance
pit lane collision
lando norris frustration
george russell crash
liam lawson incident
red flag rules
max verstappen championship
mcLaren performance
Join us as we recap a chaotic few practice sessions in the Singapore heat, with crashes and bizarre moments aplenty!
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the P1 Podcast with Matt and Tommy. Singapore Grand Prix
has arrived. Friday practice is done and dusted. That's in the bin. Tommy's loving life that there's
only one more practice session left until we get into the good stuff, the heat, the humidity,
the nighttime. It's all arrived and our championship dreams of something wild
maybe will be delivered as well this weekend, potentially. Who knows?
Yes, and you say our championship dreams collectively together because for audio
listeners, Matt is wearing a Max Verstappen T-shirt. Crazy scenes.
Look, okay. Right. So let me just talk about that very quickly.
No, you know that Charlotte is my guy, right? I want him to win the world championship for sure.
Ellie, in fact, bought both this and another Verstappen T-shirt as well because she's a big
Max Verstappen fan. As she should be. And it was oversized on her and I tried it on and was like,
wow, I'm going to wear it in the podcast. And here we are. Look, I said it before in
predictions, I think it was, and I'll say it again. I'm here for something crazy. I want
to see this championship reignited. I just want to have some drama. I want Max in the
hand. Yeah, he needs to be in the hand, doesn't he?
It's cool. It's cool. You know, I'm, everyone likes an underdog and Max Verstappen is somehow
the underdog. What world are we in that Max is the underdog?
He is. 69 points. And yeah, look, I think it'll be fun to root for Verstappen to
get back in this championship. Charlotte Clair might end up winning Singapore.
But then I think there'll be a part of me now that's like you, Tommy, and going,
but Max has lost some points. Where are we right now? What's happening?
What's happening is, yeah, the hype is insane. All the questions in the press
conference ahead of it were like, what do you think to Max? It is this massive story.
He's so far behind and I think any other driver in that situation wouldn't even
be being spoken about because it's Max. It does feel like he's lurking.
He is lurking. The momentum's there as we've seen over the super September month for him.
And it's probably worth mentioning as well, before we dive into everything free practice
related this weekend and not just purely because Tommy's on camera, but it's been
declared a heat hazard for this Singapore Grand Prix weekend due to the hot temperatures.
I know, looking at Tommy. Yeah, they just saw me and were like too much.
Yeah, they were like, damn, look at him in his, it's a football top, isn't it?
It's still a red ball. It's a red ball. But it's like a football jersey type thing.
It's designed as a football jersey, but it's red balls.
Anyway, sorry, I'm getting distracted. Yeah, so it means that teams will be forced to use
the driver calling system. They're not forced to use it. They're forced to install it.
Yes. And then it's up to the driver whether they actually use it or not.
Yeah, a weird, a weird one, isn't it? They might not want to use it.
You'd think you would in these conditions because, you know, what they've said about
this track, we've seen these conditions, haven't we? Other circuits and we had,
I think, Jensen Burton was talking about different tracks and how from his career,
he's had races that have been unbelievably hot. But the thing with Singapore and what
he was saying is you don't get many straights to kind of cool down and just stop.
You know, it's such a physical track as well as the heat. And it's such a long race as well.
It always goes on. You know, we've had Monza not that long ago, which was the shortest race in
history. Singapore, even when you don't have any yellow flags, it almost hits the two-hour mark,
so crazy. Yeah, it was an hour and 40 last year without a safety car.
And you say not many straights. I mean, Singapore has changed now. We do have
straights, but there's still no, there's no respite. It doesn't matter if they're
on a straight or not. They're still in a cooker. So that's, yeah, that's the difficulty
that these drivers have had. We have had Landon Norris last year literally making two almost
race-ending mistakes just out in front because it is such tough conditions out there.
Right, let's dive into three practice one where, well, it was daytime, so not a huge
amount to take from it in terms of the representation of the entire weekend. However,
Fernando Alonso fastest, so will you say that that is, you know, we can ignore that now? Maybe a
daytime Singapore Championship, Fernando Alonso is world champion? Bring it on. Although,
spoiler alert to FP2, at least he was continuing to be quick in there. So it didn't seem like a...
Imagine listening to a podcast. That's the only way.
You never know. But, yeah, Fernando straight out the blocks and looking very quick,
but we all know with Singapore that it's not the most representative session because
it's such different conditions going into the main action. You know, next year, of course, it's a sprint.
So this will be the representative sessions for the sprint race, which could be quite interesting,
but for here, it's not. I absolutely love how in predictions you were like, I've gone for
Lance Stroll because I think Alonso might not be going to be pretty good. And after FP1,
Alonso was first and Lance Stroll was almost two seconds behind Fernando. And you were just,
you know, getting a few points if Aston is still good. And I just sat there going,
okay, well, my good surprise could be honestly cooking some serious amounts right now.
And he does look very good indeed. Worth mentioning that at the beginning, Alex Albon,
he only put two laps on the board. He had a brake fire, which was, seemed pretty uncomfortable,
actually, for Alex in the car. You could see him sort of wiping his eye, holding his face
a little bit. And I'm thinking, you know, the amount of fumes he's inhaling in there
and it can't be the greatest sort of breathing sensation, what he was going through. But thankfully,
he managed to get out in FP2 later on in the day. Indeed, yeah, not the best start for Williams.
Although Colour Science looked pretty decent today. So it's hard to know their pace because,
yeah, particularly as we get into FP2, so crazy interrupted sessions that they had,
the running kind of pecking order was a bit all over the place, really, wasn't it?
Well, let's head into free practice too then, shall we, Tommy? I didn't actually say the top
three in free practice one. I just said Fernando Alonso, but it was Fernando Alonso,
Charlotte Clair, Max Verstappen. And then the top three in FP2, Oscar Piastri, Isaac Hachar,
and Max Verstappen. So yeah, there was a lot of incidents to talk about, some
minor, some pretty large. So why don't we start with the large one, which I don't think many
of us expected to talk about a collision in the pit lane. But that is what happened
between Charlotte Clair and Lando Norris. Lando Norris coming out of the garage
and swinging round and accelerating pretty quick to the pit lane speed limit, I would imagine.
And Ferrari released Charlotte Clair into the path of Lando Norris. They make contact,
Lando hits the wall ever so slightly on the outside pit wall, damages his front wing.
And as of recording right now, there is no penalty handed out. And maybe we get a live
reaction by the end of it. But right now, under investigation, in terms of the actual penalty
or non-penalty itself, we've seen unsafe releases in the past, and they have gone down as team
fines. This one, I'm a little bit concerned. You can see it either way, couldn't you?
Because it's such a big incident. I'm a little bit concerned as contact,
but I think the argument for Ferrari there is that Charles really couldn't have done anything
in that situation. He was released. And when they're driving out the pit lane, they're not
going to check right. They're not going to check both sides like you're crossing the road.
You go because your team member tells you to. That's what he did. And it was a team
mistake. But then again, we have team mistakes in competitive sessions. But that's
different. This is not a competitive session. So I would like to lean more
towards a team fine, but I could also get very concerned about a three-place.
Yeah, you can't put any blame on Charles. I know it was quite funny watching the...
Some people did.
Yeah, exactly. We had the Sky commentary here in the UK,
and Crofty was very quick to blame Charles Leclerc. I think Ted Kravitz also kind of
agreed with him a little bit as well.
They sounded angry.
Yeah, they sounded genuinely angry like they're done on purpose.
Like he'd basically just gone out and Charles Lecler was team Max Verstappen
and wanting Max to win the championship and thought, I'm going to plow into the
side of the McLaren and its championship back on. But it was quite funny to listen
to the two Formula One drivers in Anthony Davidson and Jensen Burton jump on it
immediately and be like, no, absolutely not. And you only have to play the Formula One game
to know that you can't see anything as you come out the pits in a cockpit view.
You just trust the mechanic. That's always been the way that it has been in Formula One.
The mechanic comes out, tells you when to go and you have to just trust them
because they're so enclosed, you can't really see what you're doing.
And it is that responsibility of the team.
In regards to the penalty, yes, it isn't Charles Leclerc's fault.
But it's not always the driver's fault, which means it's a penalty.
So you could see it happening.
Yeah, but my argument there was competitive sessions is where we are looking at.
This is not a competitive session.
Yeah, and the fact that, and this is another thing we always say in this podcast that,
you know, you can't take the consequences into account.
But it's not like it's, if it had been qualifying and Lando
missed the opportunity to do the first part of qualifying and gets knocked out,
there'd be so many calls for penalties and things that would be this massive incident.
And Ferrari would probably have got a hefty penalty there.
So they might just, they could well get away with this one because it is a practice session.
So let's answer it. P1Patreon member Fraxter straight up asks,
is that a grid penalty for Charles?
As of recording, as I say, we don't know, but I am going to say no.
I don't think you will get a penalty.
I think that there will be a heavy team fine.
But maybe that's my rose-tinted glasses or my red-tinted glasses,
if you want to call them Ferrari ones, saying that.
But I'm leaning more towards it not being a grid penalty.
Yeah, I'd be amazed if it was a grid penalty personally.
I think that would be extremely harsh for a practice session for a pit lane incident.
But that being said, I know it's not the start of qualifying,
where teams are all kind of pushing their way out.
But something does need to happen with this because it's absolutely ridiculous.
This keeps happening in Formula One and the amount of risk these teams are taking
for their car just to come out into the pack, it just seems so unnecessary to me.
It is, but how are we going to have a green, yellow and red light system?
Now you go, then you go, and it's just that's the nature of the pit lane, isn't it?
It is chaotic, and Ferrari and Charles Leclerc did not mean to put Lando in the wall there.
It's just sadly the nature of the circumstances, I would say.
Yeah, it's an interesting topic, isn't it, of like,
is this the FIA's opportunity to stamp it out and say, look, well, actually,
you are going to get a grid penalty and it might make teams a bit shocked and go, well,
actually, no, we're not going to take the risk anymore.
You could argue that that's their opportunity to stamp it out.
Now there has been a really clumsy, silly collision.
Yeah, interesting.
Hopefully for team's sake, this doesn't happen in competitive sessions,
because yes, they will get penalized a lot heavier.
Other things that happened, George Russell, of course, he had a rather large crash to be
honest with you. I was going to say reasonably lucky with the fact that he didn't rip one of
his wheels off. He sort of hit the wall at a very straight angle so that it wasn't like
a Liam Lawson, for example, where his front right came off.
But for George, he said it was a very strange, very weird incident caught him by surprise.
A mistake we don't tend to see George make too many mistakes, but we have seen it
a few times now at Singapore. And yeah, it was just a pretty poor free practice too for
Mercedes in general, 18th and 20th.
Yeah, you say he's lucky not to smash a wheel off or something, but realistically the crash
basically was a session over. So he only got six laps in, finished last.
So not that he may as well have ripped off a tyre, but in terms of the fact that it was a,
yeah, just why not? You're talking to me or the, I'm sorry.
But yeah, the George Russell incident. Yeah, you don't, I know people will go, oh, yeah,
he's crashed at Singapore a few times and stuff, but he has been one of the top drivers of the
season, is raised an experienced driver. And yeah, just it's a very shocking crash. Initially,
when I saw that he had just his front wing off, I assumed he'd just tap the barrier slowly
and was on his way back, but he went into the wall, you know, very, very heavily indeed.
He certainly did. Another crash, as I sort of previously mentioned was Liam Lawson,
which was just after where George Russell crashed, if I'm not mistaken, and just
clipped the wall on, clipped the wall on the right hand side after losing the back end
ever so slightly. And that's all it takes. More than slightly, I think.
Yeah, to be fair, he had a rather large drift, didn't he? But we tend to see a lot of
drivers hit their wheel sort of side to side with the wall and they get away with it.
But sadly for him, I think the fronts are definitely a lot more fragile than the rear tires,
maybe having a little slap of the wall because, yeah, it was pretty much,
it just flew off, didn't it? The tire just came immediately off and his session was done as well.
Yeah, we normally see that the car go wide there. We see it a lot. And sometimes,
yeah, you get away with it when you just slap the wall with both tires. But the
problem for Lawson is he got a massive snap. The rear came in, walloped the wall,
and then the front came round and also walloped the wall. So essentially had both of his front
tires down. Walloped the wall, right there. And yeah, a quite, not humorous William Lawson,
but a very strange scene where he was rolling back to the pits and then you basically saw
his tire come past him later on, which was very odd. But disappointing for Lawson because
he was looking quick and of course his teammate and racing balls looking rapid again in a practice
session. And yeah, I think Lawson was looking pretty good as well. So disappointing for him.
Disappointing indeed, you had your up in P2. A question from P1PatreonMember,
D-DoubleV. Should red flags in practice stop the clock?
Well, you know what I'm going to say on this. Absolutely not. The less time...
You say to fast forward it.
Yeah, I was going to say. One crash equals 10 seconds off practice and their punishment
for crashing is less data. And I do get the argument, and I get the argument, you know,
the fans have paid their money to be there on the Friday. They should see as much running as
possible. And it is unfortunate that they don't get to see it. And normally on other circuits,
this argument would be the fact that there's maybe like a formula to practice session or
qualifying or something later on or a race. So it's a very strict schedule.
But for a track like Singapore, where there's not so many supports and things like that,
you do wonder if they could do something like that. But, you know, my...
As someone that's on the practice hate train, I will say that, no, it's absolutely fine.
And the fact that they've got very little data from FP1, which is unrepresentative,
a very session that's kind of been scuppered a lot, where they didn't have much running.
You know, the most laps were really around 1920 laps. And then we're going to go into FP3,
which is another unrepresentative session, makes it exciting for qualifying, I think.
Yeah, it does. Back to the point about stopping the clock. No, I don't think that
should be the case at all. Dragging on practice because of crashes or things that have happened
just now. And you can't change it case by case. You can't say, oh, well,
Singapore has less of this. So therefore, we can extend it here, but then not there.
It has to be a cut off at an hour. Otherwise, we could get very sillily.
Sillily, that's a new word, long practice sessions just because, yeah, they need to have
a hard cut. And we like it. You just sort of touched upon it there, Tommy. We like when
they don't have as much data to go off because it makes for an unpredictable weekend.
So as fans, as much as you might want to see the cars going round and round and round and not
see the red flags, the end result is usually something quite exciting when they don't know
the tyre life. I think Lando Norris said after practice, he was basically alluded to the fact
he hadn't done any heavy fuel running. This sort of stuff is massive for the race.
So I'm happy to see it be one hour and one hour only.
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Croach, we've got it handled. P1P, do you remember RMB sheep? Alonzo win 33 incoming?
Stop it. I mean, he was on a sensational lap before the first red flag. I think it wasn't
in free practice too. I am not going to get too ahead of myself and Tommy definitely not with
his self as he's a big Fernando Alonzo fan. What I will say is that very much up there in sort of,
I would say P6, P7 territory, if Mercedes are genuinely struggling, which to be honest with
you, they've not really done a huge amount in this practice or this Friday practice. So
for me, I think Fernando could easily bag himself. Gosh, could he even get into the top five? I don't
know. But it's a really difficult track to make something happen and mistakes are,
as we've seen today, so easy to happen as well. And the fact that I've predicted
no yellow flags in the race, I want to just withdraw and retract that because I think it
might be a yellow flag after sort of turn two lap one at this point because there are a lot
of mistakes out there. It's difficult. But I don't think there's a win coming for Alonzo,
but I'd like to see a good handful of points. Yeah, win would be a huge stretch.
McLaren obviously looking very quick indeed. Max looks up there. Ferrari, surprisingly for me,
Ferrari, don't look as quick as I thought they might be. I know it's very unusual sessions,
so we'll find out more in qualifying. But of course, if Ferrari were good at Monaco,
Charlotte Clair getting pole at Hungary as well, so you thought this circuit would suit them more,
so I'm surprised they're not higher up the order. As for Mercedes, yeah, they're looking like they're
struggling a lot at the moment. So yeah, maybe a kind of top four, top five for Alonzo and be
that best of the rest behind potentially the McLaren and Max Verstappen maybe. But Alonzo is
so good at this track. If I hadn't gone for Lancer, I'll biggest surprise mainly just
because I joked in the podcast that the bar was low, I would have gone for Alonzo because
it's not even just the fact that the Aston Martin was always going to run well here,
because of the fact that they did well at Hungary. Singapore is such a Fernando Alonzo track,
and I know people will jump on and go, well, in 2008, he won it because of
Crushgate and all that kind of stuff, which he of course did, but he was very, very quick
in that race. Yeah, still a great drive.
Still a great drive. It's very, very quick in the race. He was actually challenging
at the front in a car that shouldn't have been there and qualifying before
an incident that put him all the way down in 14th. The year afterwards, he was on
the podium for Renault in an absolutely abysmal Renault beat Sebastian Vell in 2010. He had
so many good results here. So he is very, very good around here. So it is like a specialist
circuit, as well as it's in the Aston Martin, so I wouldn't put it past Alonzo doing something.
And you went for Lance Stroll. And I went for Lance Stroll. Well, I couldn't go for the same
anyway, could I? No, true, very true. Although I'm surprised you didn't try and lock it in
anyway. I don't have to announce it. A question from Berke Ahern. Lando seems very down and
frustrated. Is he too quick to blame himself? Yes and no. I mean, I think it's just time
to accept that certain some drivers have different mentalities. Some drivers like to
do this and this is how they perform. And if Lando ends up winning the world championship
with this mentality, then it shouldn't be put into question. Every driver's different.
So I get that there is a lot of talk of like, is it a healthy thing to be so self-critical and
put that blame on yourself that much? But we do see this trend a lot with the kind of more
modern drivers. Charlotte Clair is another great example with the I am stupid thing.
Like these drivers are very self-critical. And yeah, I heard his frustrations at the end,
of course. And it was a little bit like, okay, he's very frustrated and seemed a bit annoyed.
For those that missed it, do you want to go into it? Yeah. So basically, Lando was getting,
he had his lap at the end. He was half a second off Piastri. And his race engineer
basically said to him that we could do another lap. And he basically said,
my car's not half a second off. Is it my driving's half a second off?
So no, so a little bit more context on that was that, I think Will Joseph asked for a continuous
lap so that he wanted another lap immediately without having recharged the battery. That was
my understanding, which again was, I think Will was sort of saying that perhaps there was
time missing and he wanted more data to then be able to extract it. Whereas Lando was saying,
well, no, I'm not half a second down because of the car, I'm half a second down because of my
driving. So I think there was a little bit of a disagreement of what the run plan should be
for that final bit. I think Lando probably just wanted to recharge the battery fully and go
again. I don't actually know what happened in the end, but I know he made a mistake
because we were watching an off-board but with no times because that's just-
Yeah, he ran wide, didn't he?
But the curb and did the kind of Tony Hawk skateboarding across the curb that we see sometimes?
That curb is basically a gravel trap. It's just your time goes if you skate around that.
But back to the question and the comment about Lando. Yeah, he feels quite withdrawn,
I think, in interviews. I feel like he's sort of just trying to avoid exploding landmines
whenever a question is asked to him. And then obviously the team radio,
it's just, yeah, that is just how he is. He's an emotional driver, he feels it and
there's a lot of pressure on him. It still is. We're talking about Max Verstappen and things
like that. Lando is also trying to challenge for the championship and he's a racewind behind
his teammate. So this is how he deals with it at the moment, whether in five years time
this will be the same way he deals with a situation like this. Who knows? There's a lot
of learnings going on. But it's only practice. Like he's allowed to be as critical or not
critical as he wants. Next question, people on Patreon remember a good Karen. Lots of talk
about how much Norris loves Singapore and yet Piastri ahead in free practice one and top
of free practice two. Championship back off. Here we go. Here we go. Well, at times during
practice, maybe in the earliest stages, Oscar was the one that appeared to be building up
a little bit more. Lando was looking quick. Oscar managed clearly a lap that made Lando
have a little bit of doubts as we heard over the team radio. But a great bounce back for
Oscar so far around a very difficult circuit. We wondered, didn't we, after Baku how he'd
be feeling? But I think the pressure cooker is ramped up a thousand levels when we get to
tomorrow and qualifying in particular. So for now, Oscar has shown that, yes, he's still
got the speed that we've seen the entire season bar Baku. And yes, the McLaren is also
probably the fastest car this weekend, which is no surprise to anybody. I don't think the
championships back off by any stretch, though. No, definitely not. People are so quick to write
Lando Norris off immediately. This is a practice session. Look at Monzer, I think it was
where he was looking like he was struggling a lot and he struggled all the way through
that entire qualifying session and then he beat Piastri in the session. And we've seen that between
Piastri and Norris quite a lot this season, where one of them might be really good in
practice and then the other one gets into qualifying and surprises the other one.
And that's happened both sides of the coin here between the two of them.
So, yeah, Singapore, maybe Lando hasn't had that immediate confidence based on how good he was
last year and maybe my opinion that he was going to potentially walk this race and it'd be quite
a comfortable victory for him. Doesn't look like the case, but it is only practice and
he may well still put it on pole. McLaren looking very quick and then lead away and win. So
you can't just kind of take maybe a difficult day in practice because we've seen it turn
so many times this season. Importantly, Lando did say after all the running today that he didn't
have the same feeling as he had last year with the car as of right this second. He doesn't have
that. Of course, this is what practice is all about. The team go away and they analyze the
somewhat restricted data from today and tried to make the car better.
How many times does Max Verstappen gone? This is the worst car I've ever driven and then gets
pulled the next day. Exactly. And Max, well, let's end it there because I'm a massive Max Verstappen
fan, as you can see by my t-shirt these days. Is he in the hunt with the McLaren? Is he in
the hunt for the victory? I would say, look, actually, before I answer this question, Tommy,
people have picked up on the fact that whenever we don't talk about Max on Friday,
he does really well and potentially wins. I think that this has happened the
entire season to September. Thank you for listening to the podcast.
So in fact, we're not answering this question and we'll see you tomorrow for qualifying. How
does that sound? Goodbye. Tommy, what are your final thoughts then?
My final thoughts are who was P3? Yeah, I don't know who was P3. I can't remember.
Yeah, cool. Right. See you tomorrow. Looking forward to joining us for qualifying.
Can't wait. It's going to be back. Perfect. Well, there you go. We'll be live on Twitch
and YouTube for people on Tommy. If you want to come and watch along to qualifying on the
race this weekend and we will see you there. Not going to talk about the guy right here. Bye.
I pointed to my share for audio listeners. I can't believe we literally just cut off a question
for the sake of potentially a jinx, but we did it anyway. I'm going to do it anyway.
Such a niche reference, my God. Oh, dear.
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