BWT Alpine F1 Team ran an uneventful Friday Practice at the Marina Bay Street Circuit as preparations for the hot and humid Singapore Grand Prix began with a first taste at the new look track layout.

 


The team ended with Esteban Ocon tenth and Pierre Gasly twelfth in Free Practice 1 and later thirteenth and eighteenth, respectively, on the timesheets in the second session under the lights of the revised 4.940km circuit. The slightly changed layout sees a long, 400m straight from Turns 14 to 16 with the removal of four ninety-degree corners in the final sector.

 

 

The team ran its new sidepod inlet and beam wing updates on both A523 cars throughout the day. Tomorrow’s third and final Practice begins at 17:30 local time before Qualifying at 21:00.

 

 

Free Practice 1


Esteban, P10, 1:34.066secs, 24 laps
Pierre, P12, 1:34.639secs, 23 laps


Free Practice 2


Esteban, P13, 1:33.361secs, 25 laps
Pierre, P18, 1:33.824secs, 24 laps

 


Esteban Ocon: “It’s nice to be back driving on the streets of Singapore, a really cool and exhilarating track for us drivers. It was a decent, and very hot, Friday for us with plenty to go through on track during our run programme. First, it was good to drive here and experience the slightly different track layout and test some of the updates on our car. At this stage, I would say we have a lot of work to get through ahead of Free Practice 3 and Qualifying tomorrow in order to find some improvements. There’s more for us to extract, more to come from me, and hopefully we can put ourselves in a good position for Qualifying.”

 

 

Pierre Gasly: “It’s always good to be in Singapore and driving at this great venue at Marina Bay. The heat and humidity is very intense for us in the cockpit and that is all part of the challenge of racing here. On track, it’s been a busy day with lots of different items to get through. We have a couple of small updates on the car, so it was important to spend some time validating those from an aerodynamic point of view. In terms of our performance, I would say we have some work to do. We have a lot of things to look at on set-up and some things we can definitely improve ahead of tomorrow. The new track layout is good and it will be interesting to see how the racing is with the changes and see if it brings any overtaking opportunities.”