Grand Prix 2012 Singapore Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

From the sunshine, trees and Ferrari madness of Monza to the water front and arc lights of Singapore, F1 begins the long haul end of the season with a night race at imaginatively named Marina Bay circuit. McLaren have won the last three races but Fernando Alonso still retains a significant margin in the Drivers Championship going into round 14. Last year was a Red Bull walk over but this year the Bulls have been somewhat castrated and Monza proved a real low point with a double DNF.

Lewis Hamilton's pole to flag win in Italy must give him great hope of chasing down Alonso's Championship lead, hopefully the on-going contract shenanigans won't distract him in the City State race. Don't under estimate Ferrari however, Massa showed good pace at Monza and Fernando Alonso is the only multiple Singapore GP winner in the field, one win behind matching Graeme Lawrence's three victories (look it up if you don't believe me).

After a pulsating second at Monza Sergio Perez must be hoping to go one better this race as his Sauber, through a combination of out right pace and strategy, was chasing down the leading McLaren towards the end in Italy. Whether their usual unusual strategy in Singapore will reap the same dividends remains to be seen, perhaps it's Kamui's turn?

The one man destruction derby that is Romain Grosjean will more than likely be back in the Lotus after Jerome d'Ambrosio put in a workman like, but less than stellar performance, standing in for the Frenchman. Kimi Raikkonen must be hoping the Lotus works better around the streets than it did on the high speed Monza track although fifth wasn't a bad result. Mercedes will, doubtless, continue in their position of best of the rest although Force India were their usual speedy selves around the open curves at Monza and will probably push the Mercs close.

Of the rest, what can you say? Williams - the tortoise and the hare incarnate, albeit the hare seems to have a habit of breaking a leg a little too often. Should we run a sweep on whether Pastor or Romain will punt another driver off first? The back of the grid are using the Noah principal and will come in "two by two", in qualie at least. This is a special race for Narain Karthikeyan as it marks the anniversary of his début at HRT having driven the Spanish shit box in free practice last year. Money well spent...

Pointless fact about Singapore: If you cross into Malaysia with less than 3/4's of a tank of fuel you will be fined $100 dollars.

Circuit write up is here: http://cliptheapex.com/pages/marina-bay-street-circuit/ enjoy!
 
This is the one race where drivers nearly have to be lifted out of their cockpits after the race. They're barely able to stand on the podium aren't they?
 
I like Singapore as it is a real drivers track. It is no coinsidence that the three winners are always in the top 3 of current best drivers list.
 
If it rained here you just be looking at lap after lap of safety car action. I can't help but think of Singapore as Valencia with at night. I've spent a great deal of time in Singapore and it is a fantastic place and one of my favorite places in the world however as a track it does nothing for me at all which is a real shame.
 
As many of the drivers were commenting on with Monza, if not more so, Singapore is one of those tracks where it is almost impossible to get the "perfect lap". This is not really due to the same reasons as Monza (with such low downforce), but due to the track length and amount of tricky obscure corners. I really respected the battle between Alonso and Vettel in 2010 with Alonso having to drive inch perfect for the whole race to keep the faster car of Vettel at bay.
 
Singapore is an interesting track, I can neither say I love it or that I hate it. The cars look magnificent under the lights, but I feel it is more of a spectacle than a race. Hopefully this year will be different. This season has been a cracker so far, I don't want it to end.
 
Well we've managed half-decent Bahrain & a pretty good Valencia this year so there's hope yet.
Have we had a Singapore race without a safety car yet? My memory ain't what is used to be.
I do like the look of the cars under the glare of the lights & the on-board cameras where you can see the drivers eyes through clear visors but the race always seem to be one of the more forgettable ones in the season.
Despite all the 'action' in the 2008 race the only thing I rememer clearly is Luca dM branding the race a circus & Bernie's reply was to thank Ferrari for provinding the clowns LOL
I suspect everyone will be trying for pole position so quali should be interesting & with so many competitive cars at the moment there could well be some mouth watering battles developing.
 
I say it every year, I love Singapore. I guess it's got something to do with the fact that motor racing started on public roads and it's great to see some street circuits for that reason, and Singapore is the one road circuit that provides genuinely good racing. I don't think the track length is relevant tranquility2k9. If you look at all the circuits this season you'll find six are about half a K shorter than Singapore and the majority are only between a third to a half a K longer so the track has good length and good width to allow overtaking. The spectacle under lights is always stunning. I also don't think we need to worry about deliberate crashes. That was four years ago and the instigator of that plan has been thrown out of the sport as well as other F1 careers ruined by the whole sordid affair.
 
I don't think the track length is relevant tranquility2k9. If you look at all the circuits this season you'll find six are about half a K shorter than Singapore and the majority are only between a third to a half a K longer so the track has good length and good width to allow overtaking.

I probably incorrectly said track length and should have said lap time length - the lap times are usually around 1min 45sec, I guess due to there being so many corners and quite a few of them being slow. I was only referencing that in saying I think it's a tricky lap for the drivers to get spot on. There's lots of bumps and unusual technical corners and you usually have fairly large gaps between team mates. I remember Webber saying last year that you can lose large amounts of time for a small mistake. So the track is more unforgiving that at some circuits where every driver can usually get the maximum out of the car to a large extent.

This was my point anyway.
 
Back
Top Bottom