Luke’s Weekend Take – Singapore GP 2023

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Singapore Grand Prix 2023: Lizards, Upgrades, and Special Liveries Light Up the Night

Singapore 8

We are back after a week off in the beautiful city of Singapore under the night sky and the lit-up track of Yas Marina. We look below at the action that has taken place so far this weekend ahead of the race tomorrow. We have seen Lizards, Track changes, special liveries, car upgrades and interesting qualifying.

We start looking at the track changes we see as Singapore went from a 23-corner track to a 19-corner track as what used to be corners 16 to 19 is now practically a straight supposed to make the track 10 seconds quicker, however it has been much more if we only look at the qualifying times from last year compared to this year it seems that we have had a 15 second jump between lap times. This change also means that we will get 62 laps of racing tomorrow instead of 61 like it used to be in the past.

Some sad news for any Honey Badger fans is that we won’t see him drive here in Singapore as it was originally expected as Red Bull came out with a statement saying that he is not yet fully recovered and Japan is also looking unlikely which means Liam Lawson will still be driving instead of him for the next 2 races, hopefully we will get to see Daniel Ricciardo back behind the wheel in Qatar.

There has been a good few upgrades brought to Singapore from all the teams excluding Haas but before we delve deeper into the mechanical ones, let’s have a look at the visual upgrades we have seen. Williams are running a special Gulf livery which looks very nice but, in my opinion, it looks too much like the Mclaren Gulf livery they ran in Monaco in 2021. Speaking about Mclaren they are also running a special livery for Singapore and Japan next week where they went with a more exposed carbon look and less orange dubbing the livery as ‘Stealth Mode’. This is supposed to help with the weight of the car as with the new mechanical upgrades they got seems to have made the car heavier. What do you guys think about the special liveries we are seeing in Singapore?

We look now at the mechanical upgrades and like I mentioned, all teams barring Haas have brought some sort of upgrades for the Singapore GP. However, 2 teams that stood out are Alpha Tauri and Mclaren as they both got 8 and 9 upgrades respectively. At Alpha Tauri got new floor body & floor edge, diffuser, sidepod inlet, engine cover, rear suspension, rear corners, and rear mirrors while Mclaren brought new front wing endplate, sidepod inlet, halo, floor bode, engine cover, rear corner, rear suspension, rear wing endplate and beam wing. While the updates on the Alpha Tauri went on both cars, at Mclaren only Lando Norris got the full upgrades while Oscar Piastri only got some of these upgrades. Mclaren announced thought hat Oscar will receive them in next week’s race in Japan.

Let’s take a closer look now at the action we have had so far this weekend. In FP1, Lizard was the word as we have seen 3 lizards interrupt the session as they come out on the track and drivers had to take evasive action and then followed up by some sort of cheeky comment on the radio reporting the lizards. One that stuck to mind was between Max Verstappen and GP his race engineer as they joked that it was Godzilla’s baby as it was a smaller lizard from the previous year. At the end of the session though it was a Ferrari party as Charles Leclerc tops the leaderboard followed by Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen who claim the top 3 spots.

In FP2 we seen some mishaps happening for a few drivers, we start with Alex Albon who reported a loss of power 11 mins into the session and had to pit and miss out on the rest of FP2 as Williams reported a Power Unit issue as they started to get busy with the car. Lance Stroll had a close moment out of Turn 13 as he touches the barriers with his front right tyre, but he managed to avoid any damage and only the advertising on the barriers got slightly damaged. Sergio Perez down at Red Bull was complaining about the brakes on the car and how it felt like he was about to crash every time he brakes as the rear was stepping out. In the end it was another Ferrari 1-2 but this time it was Sainz on the top spot followed by Leclerc and George Russell.

Singapore Grand Prix 2023: Qualifying Shocks, Red Bull's Woes, and Sainz's Stunning Pole

We head onto Saturday where we managed to have a lizard free day as the marshals seems to have gotten on top of the issue. We see some more issue being reported in FP3 by drivers but the one that stuck with me was Verstappen complaining about the gear shifts on his Red Bull. At first, I didn’t read too much into this as Max always seems to complain about his shifts, but this time Max didn’t stop complaining saying that they are way to aggressive and every time he shifts, he is getting wheelspin due to the aggressiveness of the shifts. We then look at Liam Lawson who had a bit of a moment in Turn 2 as he loses the rear as he rode the kerb for a while, and he spun out. Luckily, he managed to keep the car out of the barriers and got going once again. Alex Albon also had a bit of a moment coming into the new Turn 16 as he broke a bit late and realised he wasn’t going to make the corner so had to take to the exit road and turn around again. In the end Sainz was quickest again ahead of qualifying followed by George Russell and Lando Norris.

The sky turned dark, and the lights are on with everyone ready for Qualifying and let me tell you what a session that was, loads of shocks and upsets happened in this Qualifying at the Marina Bay Circuit in Singapore. Q1 looked like it was going well until the last runs were underway, the track was evolving very quickly and on the last runs we see Yuki Tsunoda put a lap in that put him straight to the top with the 2 Haas cars following him in 2nd and 3rd, this showed that no one was safe, and everyone’s last lap was crucial. Lance Stroll was on his lap which looked like he was improving but also on a quite scrappy lap. On the last turn before taking the chequered flag however he loses the rear and takes a massive shunt in the barrier bringing out the Red Flag. Luckily, Stroll was not injured at all and managed to walk out of the car, but this meant that everyone had to stop their run and due to there not being enough time for an outlap, the session was not continued, and we lost Valtteri Bottas, Oscar Piastri, Logan Sargeant, Zhou Guanyu and Lance Stroll in Q1.

After a bit of a delay so that the marshals can sort the track out and remove the Aston Martin of Stroll from the track, we get underway with Q2 and boy oh boy was that interesting. Red Bull had a Q2 they would not want to remember. Both Max and Sergio Perez were not particularly happy with the car all weekend and in Q2 it really showed, after the first runs both Red Bull drivers were in 11th and 12th and when it came to the 2nd runs you could tell that Max had no grip on his lap as in Sector 1 he loses a lot of time and then recovers the lap a bit in the next 2 sectors but his lap was only good enough for 10th which later was knocked out by Liam Lawson, Perez on the other hand lost the rear in Sector 1 and spun out and given that he was already in 11th place, it meant he also missed out of Q3. This is the first time since 2018 since a Red Bull failed to reach Q3. To top it all off Max Verstappen is also under investigation for impeding, he has had 3 different incidents noted by the stewards so we could see Verstappen starting from way further back than 11th. In Q2 we lost Max Verstappen, Pierre Gasly, Sergio Perez, Alex Albon and Yuki Tsunoda.

Q3 was a strange sight this season not seeing any Red Bull but it didn’t disappoint with the action either. Ferrari so far seem to have nailed it in Singapore especially Carlos Sainz as he was at the top of the leaderboards in most of the sessions and he kept this up in Q3 as well. After the first runs Sainz had provisional pole with Leclerc behind him and it was looking good for Ferrari to have a front row lockout which hasn’t happened here in Singapore since 2014 where we had Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg locking out the front row. When it was time for the final run, Sainz didn’t disappoint again as he takes pole, but Leclerc missed out on 2nd place when Russell put a blisteringly fast lap in the end to finish 0.072 seconds off Sainz and only 0.006 seconds faster than Leclerc. The top 10 for tomorrow are Carlos Sainz, George Russell, Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris, Lewis Hamilton, Kevin Magnussen, Fernando Alonso, Esteban Ocon, Nico Hulkenberg and Liam Lawson.

This grid gives me hope for a great race tomorrow especially with rain being on the forecast and can 1 also hope that it might be the first time this season where a Red Bull doesn’t win the race? There is much more to play for tomorrow and a lot of on track battles to be had. I will be routing for a Leclerc win personally, who will you be routing for?

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