Ladies and Gentlemen,

No, Mercedes is not on top of the timesheets, it’s Red Bull and then Ferrari looking like they can give the Germans a run for their money. Mercedes strength, superior performance on the harder compounds has disappeared in the Marina Bay circuit. The fastest lap times in Friday’s practice sessions were 4-5 seconds quicker on light fuel loads using the supersoft (red) compound, (soft/yellow is the other one for this GP) what we have to look at is the times the top teams were doing on their race simulations, that is with 3-lap used options / supersoft with the estimated starting fuel loads, and that data points out to a very contested race on Sunday as Ferrari and specially Red Bull are showing better pace than Mercedes. Both Lewis & Nico were the only drivers pushing the longevity of the superfsoft doing the longest stints of the day with 20-21 laps, hinting a possible one-stopper for the 51 lap-race, or getting ready for the ever-present Safety Car, but their average times were in the 1m52s-1m-53s, which is a long way from their fastest QF simulation times of 1m46s. Red Bull and Ferrari on the other corner were doing 1m50s-1m51s laps with better consistency and as you see in P2 results, going even faster in QF simulations.

P1- ROS (1.49.995), HAM RIC VET RAI BOT VER HUL SAI MAL

P2- KVY (1.46.142) RAI (-0.039) RIC HAM (-0.337) VET PER ROS ALO HUL VER

The Marina Bay circuit is very tough on tyres, particularly the rears. It’s a destructive combination of the 2000 lights heating up the track to 38 deg C, abrasive surface and the 23 turns (10 of them in 2nd or 3rd gear), almost all of them 90 degree corners or less. No wonder Red Bull is flying around here; they won this race from 2011 to 2013 and took 2nd & 3rd places last year.

As overtaking is almost impossible we can expect everybody doing the max to qualify as high as possible, even if that will compromise race set-up. We are up for a straight battle between Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari; Force India is showing great pace too but is seems that Williams’ chassis is very unsettled attacking the high kerbs that are so important to climb over at every corner entry and exit.

Mercedes is on route to tie the 22-year old record of 24 consecutive poles by Williams, but this time it doesn’t look as easy as in the last 23...This could the most exciting QF session we’ve seen in a long-long time. And of course, that means trouble for us!

Our best marks in QF this year are: Fernando-27 points, Manbos 25, Cato 22, which at 12 races are already better this season than all the 19 GP’s last year! (thank you Lewis)

Cato- HAM RIC ROS

What’d you say?