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!
 
One thing about Singapore is that you can pretty well count on there being a safety car. We saw that when Bruno Senna stopped in FP2 they had to red flag the session as they needed to get a crane from elsewhere. So do the teams take this into account when filling the cars? Is anyone prepared to take a gamble and short fill to give better speed and tyre wear?

It might pay the second tier of teams to do it with one of their drivers.
 
Bill Boddy...... Back to the Mark Hughes article Bill he says the fuel tanks, and therefore the overall dimensions an F1 car are based around the fuel consumption at Singapore, and even on full tanks things are marginal, especially if there's no safety car. I assume we can take from that they squeeze every drop they can into the cars and still have to be conscious of conserving fuel at some stage during the race. Certainly sounds like light fueling is out of the question.
 
A couple of accidents in the wrong places and there could easily be the safety car out for ten or more laps. It would be a gamble, but for a driver looking at eleventh place it might just be worth a go.
 
Charles Pic is under investigation for overtaking under red flags during FP3.
It will be interesting to see what the penalty is, if any.
 
Pic's penalty is he has to appear at an FIA Road Safety Course.

What a very strange (non) penalty for that particular offence.

Edit: He has also had 20 seconds added to his race time. Again very unusual as added time is usually applied in lieu of a drive through penalty which isn't taken during the race.
 
So, how many times has Bruno hit (in varying intensity) the barriers so far this weekend? Was it just 2 or was it 3? Good bet he repeats the act in the race. I still don't know how he still has a ride.

Maldonado on the front row should make the first race lap interesting, albeit dangerous.
 
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