Singapore Airlines Singapore GP 2016

[cosworth151]

Renault now says that they will have the new engine available for Danny Ric this week-end. K Mag & Palmer will get them, too.

http://www.racer.com/f1/item/134380-all-renault-drivers-will-now-get-upgrade

[Scott]

I bet MV is sulking 

[cosworth151]

FP3 times. Hamilton on Supers, all others on Ultras:

1   6   N.ROSBERG   1:44.352   
2   33   M.VERSTAPPEN   1:44.411   
3   7   K.RAIKKONEN   1:44.860   
4   3   D.RICCIARDO   1:44.903   
5   5   S.VETTEL      1:45.104   
6   27   N.HULKENBERG   1:45.316   
7   26   D.KVYAT       1:45.503   
8   44   L.HAMILTON   1:45.806   
9   55   C.SAINZ        1:45.879   
10   77   V.BOTTAS     1:45.947   
11   11   S.PEREZ        1:46.112   
12   14   F.ALONSO     1:46.164   
13   21   E.GUTIERREZ   1:46.316   
14   19   F.MASSA       1:46.529   
15   20   K.MAGNUSSEN   1:47.116   
16   22   J.BUTTON           1:47.277   
17   12   F.NASR         1:47.293   
18   8   R.GROSJEAN   1:47.411   
19   9   M.ERICSSON   1:47.956   
20   30   J.PALMER      1:48.689   
21   94   P.WEHRLEIN   1:49.201   
22   31   E.OCON        1:49.565

[Dare]

I bet MV is sulking 

Max doesn't sulk he has a built in scowl that's always there
even when he smiling

[J.Clark]

True, and then they blew it when it wouldn't have even been close.

Saturday free practice results:
1.  Rosberg      Mercedes   1m 44.352
2.  Verstappen    Red Bull   1m 44.411
3.  Raikkonen      Ferrari   1m 44.860
4.  Ricciardo      Red Bull   1m 44.903
5.  Vettel      Ferrarii   1m 45.104
6.  Hulkenberg      Force India   1m 45.316
7.  Kvyat      Toro Rosso   1m 45.503
8.  Hamilton   Mercedes   1m 45.806
9.  Sainz       Toro Rosso   1m 45.879
10. Bottas      Williams   1m 45.947
11. Perez      Force India   1m 46.112
12. Alonso      McLaren   1m 46.164
13. Gutierrez  Haas   1m 46.316
14. Massa      Williams   1m 46.529
15. Magnussen   Renault   1m 47.116
16. Button      McLaren  1m 47.277
17. Nasr      Sauber   1m 47.293
18. Grosjean    Haas   1m 47.411
19. Ericsson   Sauber   1m 47.956
20. Palmer   Renault   1m 48.689
21. Wehrlein    MRT   1m 49.201
22.  Ocon      MRT   1m 49.565

Qualifying about an hour away.

[cosworth151]

Disastrous Q1 for Vettel. Problems with his rear suspension was causing his inside front tire to lift off the ground on every corner. P22! Last year's winner will start from last place.

[J.Clark]

Here is the grid - no penalties this time; although, to make the engine penalty system work as intended, Hamilton should be P-22 again this race.

1.  Rosberg      Mercedes   1m 42.584
2.  Ricciardo      Red Bull   1m 43.115
3.  Hamilton      Mercedes   1m 43.288
4.  Verstappen    Red Bull   1m 43.328
5.  Raikkonen      Ferrari   1m 43.540
6.  Sainz       Toro Rosso   1m 44.197
7.  Kvyat      Toro Rosso   1m 44.469
8.  Hulkenberg      Force Indias   1m 44.479
9.  Alonso      McLaren   1m 44.553
10. Perez      Force India   1m 44.582

11. Bottas      Williams   1m 44.740
12. Massa      Williams   1m 44.991
13. Button      McLaren   1m 45.144
14. Gutierrez  Haas   1m 45.593
15. Grosjean  Haas   1m 45.723
16. Ericsson      Sauber   1m 47.827

17. Magnussen      Renault   1m 46.825
18. Nasr      Sauber   1m 46.860
19. Palmer   Renault   1m 46.960
20. Wehrlein    MRT   1m 47.667
21. Ocon      MRT   1m 48.296
22. Vettel      Ferrari   1m 49.116

Massa, Bottas, Button, and perhaps even a Haas were caught out by the yellow in Q2, preventing them (each was on a hot lap) from advancing.  Such is the way . . . 

Up front, the Mercedes duo may have a rough go of it, if they can't win the race through turn 1.  Ricciardo is on a more durable tire, and if he can beat Nico on the start - a possibility - Nico's race could be in real jeopardy.  Kimi too has been quick, particularly on the starts, and if he can stay ahead of Hamilton through turn 1, let alone perhaps get Rosberg as well, that will make for an exciting first stint, if nothing else.

While it could be unlikely, Ricciardo could win this race and it is not unlikely that Kimi could even finish on the podium should a Merc have problems.

[Steve A.]

I think Button touched the wall and got a flat, he was already past the yellows, a shame really he would have been top ten. If Hamilton suffers from another bad start he could be well down the order.

[Scott]

Jenson complained that the steering broke, but the video showed clearly a rear flat tire - good spot DH1.

Perez has received a 5 grid place penalty, and additional 3 place penalty and 3 points on his license for blowing past double yellows without slowing and passing Gutierrez in the same area.  Of course Perez insisted he did slow, but the telemetry shows that he is full of it   

http://www.pitpass.com/57284/Two-grid-penalties-for-Perez

[John S]

Perez has received a 5 grid place penalty, and additional 3 place penalty and 3 points on his license for blowing past double yellows without slowing and passing Gutierrez in the same area.  Of course Perez insisted he did slow, but the telemetry shows that he is full of it   

Nah, just shows he doesn't have a good lawyer like Rosberg.

Trouble is when like Perez you're on your best run (or only run) and you get a shunt like Grosjean's you're damned if you do - but also if you don't. Can't see an answer apart from Charlie throwing a red straight away - takes the pressure of doing something stupid off the drivers.     

I remember thinking, when watching Q3, Rosberg's out in front of Lewis he might try tapping the barriers in a low speed shunt to deny Lewis a run at the pole.     Seeing MV's Red Bull charging past on the warm up lap only added to my delusions - I figured they were thinking like me.  

[Alianora La Canta]

Warning! Rant alert!

As of the German Grand Prix, throwing a red is exactly what Charlie is required to do in this situation, by the rules (albeit, not ones they've bothered to write down yet). He didn't do it. I'd like to know why.

The speed under yellow-flag situation... ...if I comment on why Sergio was for all practical purposes obliged to drive it the way he drove it, and why the stewards broke the regulations by penalising him for it, I'll be in trouble.

As for the overtake situation, I've seen it and the only way Sergio could have stayed behind the car he overtook under yellows was to cause (or rather extend) the hazard himself. The rules are such that, at absolute minimum, Gutierrez should have received an Article 30.14 infraction - but apparently he wasn't even asked why he was so slow. There were at least two occasions where overtaking due to the other car being excessively slow was permitted last year. Sergio did exactly the common-sense thing there and was penalised for not making things more dangerous than necessary.

Add to this that Verstappen was allowed to hit Perez in the race without so much as an investigation, and that Williams was allowed to release Bottas dangerously (nearly injuring mechanics from 2 different rival teams in the process) without penalty, and it is easy to get the impression that that the stewards were more interested in penalising Force India than in regulating the race (i.e. their actual job) this race.

[Scott]

Great points Ali.  I'm not really sure why Sergio couldn't have slowed more for double yellows considering he improved on his previous lap during the double yellows, but I completely agree that he had no choice but to pass Gutierrez who had practically pulled to a stop.

The Bottas release was not so unusual, but what I found frightening was that Bottas decided to race the Ferrari even though it was going the maximum pit lane speed by that point, and Bottas was clearly behind.  It was impossible to have legally pulled in front, and simply an intimidation move, while if the mechanic (was it FI or McLaren, I am not sure) organizing the front right tire of the pit he went past, had moved his foot one cm back, it certainly would have been clipped, and how Bottas didn't run over the air hoses which could have killed someone if they had been caught up in his wheel, is beyond me.  I would have penalized Bottas had I been a steward.

Sorry I missed chat.  Would have been plenty to talk about.  I can point out that Max should thank his lucky stars he had such a lousy start otherwise he would have been wiped out by Huldenberg in the opening seconds.  As it was, I was grinning ear to ear watching Kvyatt keep him at bay through a good chunk of the race.  I wonder if STR is getting a phone call from RBR this morning about a revision to their driver lineup for the rest of the season.

As usual it seems nobody will be held accountable by the track worker out on the main straight under green flag conditions.  The FIA has dozens of officials whose job is entirely based around safety, but none of them bother to scan even the front straight as the green flag is called?  Wow...

[Monty]

Completely agree with your sentiments Ali. Yet more inconsistency!! However, the idea of dropping double waved yellows in favour of throwing a red has not been ratified so there is no process to invoke it. What is undeniable is that the drivers were all told to 'slow significantly' under double yellows and the rule not to overtake under yellows has been around for ever! Perez chose to ignore clear instructions, not once, but twice. Personally I didn't feel the penalties were harsh enough!
More worrying for me was that the race was even more boring than the last one. Never before have I watched a race hoping that someone would stuff it in the wall to cause a safety car. Anything to create some interest. I was then focusing my attention on Vestappen - in the sense that I started to hope he would be the one to stuff it in the wall! His driving always borders on the plain dangerous but he makes this worse by whining when anyone challenges him. A truly awful race!

[Alianora La Canta]

Charlie Whiting has the power to issue such directives, though no formal framework exists to formalise that, and if he didn't, he should have been corrected officially by the FIA in the lead-up to the German Grand Prix (the first race where the directive applied). He wasn't, so leading everyone to expect a red flag to avoid the very question Sergio Perez faced when finding there wasn't a red flag there.

Overly-slow driving has been forbidden through Article 30.14 since 2008, there's been precedent since 2009 that people breaching that principle can be overtaken without penalty (since staying behind them would be more dangerous than not doing so), and it did look like a suspiciously slow Haas. Whether it was slow enough to justify overtaking may be debatable, but given that a Kvyat at 37 mph was considered overtakably slow in similar circumstances in 2014, I suspect it would be a pretty short debate. Yet Gutierrez wasn't even asked why he went that slowly, and no reference was made in the notes to awareness of the regulation (something which also affected Sergio's ability to slow down for the yellow flags, in combination with another ruling - I'd explain further, but lawyers).

That Bottas even had a decision to make on racing Raikkonen proves the unsafe release infraction against Williams, and Bottas having 2 wheels in the slow lane of a pit other than his own is a separate offence for dangerous driving against Bottas. It was a Force India mechanic he nearly hit (and he was slightly further away from a McLaren and another FIF1 mechanic), so FIF1 was pretty furious when such dangerous behaviour attracted no penalty.

The release of a marshal onto a green track disgusted me, as did Channel 4's decidedly casual attitude to the matter (particularly in social media). Marshal safety is not a laughing matter. Maybe a virtual safety car could not have been invoked but warning flags should have been - as it was, only the sector after the marshal was yellow-flagged, which is pointless.

I was the only one in my family who managed to stay awake for the whole race, which particularly impressed my parents because I'd followed it on Twitter "live" (Plan A had been to watch it at the gym, but the last bit of my half-marathon reconnaisance was slower than expected and I got back home 10 minutes before the start) and then watched the "highlights" (seemed like all but a 12-lap section of the race, there to fill a gap between Paralympics coverage). After all the rule-breaking of the first 10 laps, it was hard to feel anything for the race, and I spent most of it worrying about the day of reckoning the FIA will have over the patterns of behaviour Singapore exposed so blatantly.

Mark my words, it is coming, and there is nothing I or anyone outside the FIA can do to prevent that.

[lkjohnson1950]

NASCAR and Indycar both have officials in the pits, at least 1 per pit stall. If they see a violation, they call an immediate penalty. No review, no protest, serve it now. Why doesn't F1 have this sort of system?