Singapore, 25 September 2009

“Difficult” was a word that featured more than once in today’s official Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro team press release, after Kimi Raikkonen ended FP2 fourteenth, with Giancarlo Fisichella two places behind his team-mate. In this final phase of the season, the pecking order among the ten teams seems to depend on which of them is keen to pursue development of their 2009 cars and which have opted to concentrate on next year. We fit into the latter group. Nevertheless, Friday times are not an accurate guide to performance and that is especially true at circuits where the track surface is very “green.” As a once-a-year track, the Marina circuit will take time to give some grip for the tyres to work with, so tomorrow should see an improvement when the final free practice session gets underway at seven in the evening.




At least both our drivers managed to avoid making contact with the barriers which, this being a street circuit, are an ever present threat. Sebastian Vettel ended up fastest for Red Bull, ahead of last year’s winner, Fernando Alonso in the Renault. In third place, Heikki Kovalainen in the McLaren was the only other driver to get under the 1m 49 second barrier. Nick Heidfeld was fourth for BMW, with championship leader, Jenson Button, fifth for Brawn. Sixth place went to Mark Webber, but it was not a great day for the Australian Red Bull driver, as he crashed in FP3, bringing out the red flag, that rather interrupted the Scuderia’s own programme in terms of upsetting it’s long run testing, essential to evaluate tyre performance over a distance.

Although this is the second time the F1 circus has come to Singapore, the first sight of the cars rushing around this challenging circuit, under the glare of hundreds of floodlights, is as impressive as ever.