Lando Norris says he doesn’t have the same feeling in the car that he had in winning last year’s Singapore Grand Prix after struggling during Friday practice.
McLaren dominated 12 months ago with Norris beating Max Verstappen to victory by over 20 seconds, leading every lap from pole position. Starting this weekend, however, Norris ended FP2 half a second adrift of teammate Oscar Piastri in fifth place, and says he’s not comfortable with the MCL39 so far.
“It’s just a difficult day for me, not feeling too great with the car,” Norris said. “Missing all of the feelings that I had here last year. So plenty of things to work on … just a bad day.
“Oscar’s quick, so I’ve got nothing to complain about, bar just not doing a very good job.”
After the second of two red flags, Norris also had his running impacted by contact with Charles Leclerc when the Ferrari driver was released into his path in the pit lane, but the Briton shrugged off the incident, adding: “I mean, it cost the team a bit of money, which is a shame.”
On the other side of the garage, championship leader Piastri was more upbeat, as he made encouraging progress to end FP2 on top.
“I think I found my feet on the on the medium [tire] at the end there,” Piastri said. “And then the soft felt good. Obviously not much representative kind of race running, but the car’s been in good place. I feel like I’ve learned a lot through today, and that’s the aim of practice, so it’s been a good day.”
Piastri was happy to sacrifice high fuel running late on in order to prioritize his feeling in qualifying trim, given the significance of track position in Singapore.
“Here, qualifying is a massive part of the weekend. It’s a massive part everywhere, but I think especially here, it’s one of the most important,” he said. “So you’d rather qualify further up and deal with the unknown for the race, than qualify further back but know exactly what’s going to happen in the race because it’s not really going to help you.”
Max Verstappen is the closest rival to the two McLarens in the drivers’ championship, and after ending both practice sessions in third place the Dutchman is also encouraged by his start to the weekend.
“I think FP1 started quite nicely,” Verstappen said. “We were just getting up to speed with things. The car was not too bad – a bit like the last two weekends where there were no major problems. Then in FP2 a few things that we tried, some were good, so we just need to try and optimize that a bit more. Overall in general quite satisfied, but definitely need a bit more pace to fight up at the front tomorrow.
“It’s definitely very positive [to start well at this circuit]. Still a few things that we want to do better but it’s not like we need to throw out the setup completely, so that’s a good thing. We’ll see tomorrow. Is it going to be good enough to fight up front? I don’t know. I always find FP2 is a bit difficult to say, with people running [different] engine modes, top-speed wise. I guess we’ll see in qualifying.
“Tiny details [matter] – front grip, rear grip, keeping the tires alive throughout the lap. Around here the tires overheat a lot. All those things just need to be a little bit better and then hopefully that will be a bit more in the window, then you can push a bit harder.”
