Friday Practice Recap

The concrete canyons of the downtown street course in Singapore are a far cry from the wide open countryside of the Monza circut. So far, this drastic change, including going from day to night driving, has not proven to be overly difficult for the Scuderia Toro Rosso squad. In fact, it might just prove to be the thing to get them over the disappointment of the last race.   

Daniel Ricciardo logged 24 laps in FP1, with a best time of 1:52.275, which was 9th fastestin the session. In FP2 he got his best lap (of 26) downby two seconds to 1:50.189, but this was only good enough for 14th fastest overall.

Jean-Eric Vergne was slower in both sessions, posting a best time (of 25 laps) of 1:53.189 in FP1; 17th overall. He managed to shave just over one second off of that in FP2, with a best time of 1:52.009 out of 31 laps; 18th overall.

Here are the team's post Friday comments:

Daniel Ricciardo:

   "This is not your run of the mill circuit, with the night and the atmosphere at what is a unique venue. It's great to have a change and myself and Jean-Eric had a chat after the first session and both agreed we were having fun! I felt the first session went better than the second and the changes we made before FP2 meant we did not seem to keep up with track evolution. We therefore need to think what we can do to get closer to the top ten like we were in the first session. But trying things out, whether they work or not, is what Friday is about. As for the tyres, the Supersoft is naturally faster and by quite a bit, while the Soft logically proved more consistent over a long run."

Jean-Eric Vergne:

"This is definitely the hardest new circuit I have come across so far this season, with so many corners and the fact it's really hot. I really enjoyed this whole experience of racing on a street circuit at night, but at first I was making a lot of mistakes on what is a very long lap. But I am getting used to it, I brought the car back in one piece and I know I will improve tomorrow. Overall, the car did not feel too bad, so I think if we can improve it a bit and I learn my way round a bit better, there should be more to come for the rest of the weekend."

Laurent Mekies, Chief Engineer:

"A very different challenge to our last race in Monza, the lowest downforce track of the year and the Singapore layout was always going to be more challenging for us. We had a full programme to get through today, which required doing a lot of laps, partly to allow our drivers, especially Jean-Eric on his first visit here, to get into the rhythm of this difficult circuit. We also needed to find the best compromise in terms of car balance on short and long runs. We still have plenty of work to do, because although there were moments today when our performance was reasonable, we were not able to reproduce that consistently. We have to understand the reasons for that so we can move forward. On the positive side, both cars ran reliably and neither of our guys made any mistakes and we know how tough this track can be for the drivers. We evaluated a couple of new elements on the car and we have to look at all the data with the aim of upping our overall performance, especially in race trim for Sunday."