2024 Singapore Thoughts
THE BIG PICTURE: If Red Bull has indeed started to find solutions to their car problems, that throws the constructors' championship to being up in the air again, and a confidence booster for Verstappen to hang on to his driver's lead.
EVENT: On the one hand, would love to go this event. On the other hand, would not want to deal with the heat and humidity.
TRACK: Well, it's not Baku racy... But it sure did cause headaches with tires and setup this year.
QUALIFYING: It will be the Lando and Max battle again as they take the front row, Mercedes suddenly finds speed to nail down the second row, everything goes wrong for Ferrari, Hulkenberg gives Haas a lot of smiles, Perez does himself no favors eliminated in Q2, and Ricciardo does himself no favors eliminated in Q1.
RACE: Remember when we hated these dominating races because they were, like, boring? Just different players doing the dominating.
START: Norris gets the best start of his career, Hamilton pulls alongside Verstappen but thinks better of it, Alonso and Leclerc go for the runoff area, and Colapinto gains three spots by dive bombing his teammate who subsequently lost four spots.
NORRIS: It wasn't perfect. He did brush the wall twice, the first time locking up nearly heading right into it. Despite that, his confidence level was through the roof.
PIASTI: No doubt, it would have been a second place if he qualified better.
MCLAREN: So, they didn't need that clever faux-DRS rear wing after all...
VERSTAPPEN: Max's car came alive just in time so as to minimize the points loss. This performance may have saved him the driver's title.
PEREZ: But Sergio once again did the team no favors, only garnering one point when he's supposed to provide a lot more.
RED BULL: Mixed bag. Kept the driver points loss to a minimum. Got hammered on the constructor side.
LECLERC: Could Charles have contended with a better qualifying? At least for a podium.
SAINZ: Ditto.
MERCEDES: The most inconsistent amongst the top four teams.
HULKENBERG: An excellent weekend.
MAGNUSSEN: He's back. To create more havoc in his final races.
ALBON: Not happy with his new teammate.
COLAPINTO: But Franco sure did perform well again.
ALPINE: Miserable.
RICCIARDO: No matter what happens to Daniel in the next few weeks and whether we see him in Texas, no doubt his move from Red Bull to Renault after the 2018 season will go down as one of the worst driver decisions in F1 history.
SAUBER: Still zero points.
FIA: It's amazing how often the FIA, or more accuately a particular individual who we won't publicize by naming because that's all that he craves, keeps tripping over their own dicks.
F1 ACADEMY: Everyone figured, once Doriane Pin was 100% healthy, she'll return to her early season domination. Not so fast, Abbi Pulling said. The Brit took pole, led every lap, and won the first race. She repeated that for race 2, adding fastest lap. Pulling has won seven out of the 10 races, and has nearly cemented the the title with a 95 point lead with two doubleheader weekends left at the end of the F1 season.
WORD OF THE WEEKEND: Lizard.
STAT OF THE WEEKEND: 0 -- For the first time ever at Singapore, there were no safety cars (not even a virtual safety car). In fact, there hasn't been a safety car since Canada. Remarkable when you consider how much more competitive the field has gotten since then.
HISTORICAL STAT OF THE WEEKEND: Heading into Singapore this year, Ferrari had a pole streak going back to 2019, though two years it was cancelled due to the pandemic. In 2019, Charles Leclerc had it, but his teammate, Sebastian Vettel won. Leclerc got it again in 2022, but Sergio Perez (Red Bull) won. Then, Carlos Sainz turned the pole into victory in 2023.
TWEET OF THE WEEKEND: Leave it up to Günther Steiner @BanterSteiner to put this whole cursing thing in perspective:
I can't believe a bunch of hypocrites at the FIA have actually given a fucking penalty for swearing. The world has officially gone fucking mental!
#SingaporeGP #F1
QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND: In the cooldown room, when the drivers reacted to the highlight of Lando Norris nearly crashing out, Oscar Piastri turned to him miming a microphone in his hand, and said, "Without using swear words, how did it feel at that moment?" Norris couldn't answer under those restrictions...
QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND RUNNERUP: At the pre-weekend press conference on Thursday, Charles was asked about Ferrari upgrades, "We don't have a mini DRS as an upgrade."
SCHEDULE: We get a surprising long break, and then there's six weekends left, three of them with sprints. The first combo comes up next in Austin.
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