THE stage is set for a battle royal in tonight’s SingTel Singapore Grand Prix qualifying session, with white, blue and yellow the colours to watch out for.
Title contenders Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello of Brawn GP, dark horse Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull and last year’s tarnished winner Fernando Alonso of Renault dominated the first two practice sessions yesterday. Barrichello, who trails drivers’ championship leader Button (80 points) by 14 points, clocked the fastest time of 1min 50.179sec in the first session on the bumpy and dusty track.The Briton was second, slightly less than two-tenths of a second behind.
Vettel, third in the standings on 54 points, topped the timesheets in the second session with 1:48.650.
Alonso, who won with the help of teammate Nelson Piquet Jr’s deliberate crash during last year’s race, was second behind Vettel. He was fourth after the first session.
Singapore’s track and humidity, however, should suit the set-up of the Brawns. The team have won the season’s other street races in Monaco (Button) and Valencia (Barrichello), and their tyres perform best on warm tracks. Whoever grabs pole position after today’s qualifying will carry a heavy advantage into tomorrow’s race, as the narrow and tight Marina Bay street circuit offers precious few overtaking opportunities.
While Brawn and Co. excelled, Ferrari struggled. Kimi Raikkonen was ninth and Giancarlo Fisichella 17th after the first session. They were 14th and 16th in the second. The F60, which excelled on the high-speed circuits in Belgium and Italy over the previous two races, looks unsuited to the stop-start nature of Singapore’s twisting track - the second-slowest on the F1 calendar.
The night, however, was highlighted by Romain Grosjean’s accident during the first session, in which he hit the same barrier wall as Piquet Jr did in his infamous crash last year. Red Bull’s Mark Webber also crashed on the final turn midway through P2. Yesterday’s practices were essential in gathering data to find the best set-up for the weekend, especially for teams like McLaren who have introduced major upgrade packages.
After complaints last year that the track resembled the ‘cobbled streets of Paris’, organisers took efforts to smoothen out the bumps this time. But this appears to still be an issue, with sparks emanating from the back of Fisichella’s Ferrari as the bottom dragged along the roads. Clouds of dust were also visible, with construction work going on in the past week since the roads were closed on Wednesday. But this should clear up as more laps are put in and cars lay rubber on the track today. - The Strait Times