PIRELLI: WHAT WE LEARNED FROM FP1 AND FP2

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM FP1 AND FP2

Free practice in Singapore panned out pretty much as expected: drivers faced a green and slippery circuit in hot and humid conditions, with quite a big disparity between the daylight conditions of FP1 and the night running in FP2.
Up to now, there's a performance difference of more than a second per lap between the Red soft compound and the Yellow medium, then around 0.8 seconds between the medium and the White hard.
Ambient temperatures were 29 degrees centigrade halfway through FP2 with track temperatures of 33 degrees: similar to the expected race conditions.
There was no graining and blistering at all during FP1. Grip increased as expected once the track began to rubber in.
FP1 was interrupted by a red flag, after Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas went off during a long run.
The soft tyre (the C5 compound, which is the softest of the P Zero Formula 1 range) was quickest in both sessions, on the Red Bull of Max Verstappen in FP1 and the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton in FP2.

MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF F1 AND CAR RACING

"There were no big surprises from free practice in Singapore, with the track and conditions similar to last year. This resulted in broadly similar lap times compared to 2018. The track is still evolving so let's see tomorrow. Despite the challenging conditions here – many drivers call this the toughest circuit physically of the entire year – we experienced no blistering or graining, with the teams accumulating plenty of useful data for a race that is likely to run to the full two hours. While the soft tyre dominated the action today, all three compounds were sampled. The medium and the hard look set to be viable race tyres as well: especially for those starting outside the top 10 on the grid, with a one-stopper quite likely as the optimal race strategy. With the big lap time gap between medium and soft seen so far, this makes qualifying on the medium appear to be quite a tall order."