It was a day of mixed fortunes for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team during Friday practice for the 2025 Singapore Grand Prix. George Russell saw his FP2 session end prematurely in the barriers, while rookie teammate Kimi Antonelli showed promising pace that wasn’t reflected on the final timesheets. Despite the setbacks, both drivers expressed optimism about finding improvements ahead of qualifying at the demanding Marina Bay Street Circuit.
The challenging nature of the Singapore Grand Prix was on full display, with several drivers struggling for grip. The weekend is a crucial one for Mercedes as they look to build on recent momentum.
Russell laments “weird” FP2 crash
Russell’s Friday running came to an abrupt halt after a crash in the second practice session. The Briton described the incident as unusual, noting that he couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause of the rear-end snap that sent him into the wall. While the damage ended his session, he was thankful it wasn’t more severe.
Speaking after the session, Russell explained the incident and apologised to his team. “It was a bit of a weird one to be honest, not too sure what happened, braked a bit earlier, went in a little bit slower but then just lost the rear… a bit annoying sorry to the team for that but better today than tomorrow”.
Despite the crash, Russell felt the car had potential. He noted that while FP1 was difficult, the initial laps of FP2 showed promise. “FP1 was challenging but in those early laps [I] had a much better feel with the car to be honest and the pace seemed better… it’s not not been our best Friday by a long way but Singapore the track’s always evolving there’s a bit of rain in the air so I’m not too concerned”.
To cap off a frustrating session, Russell also revealed a technical issue with a new cooling device. “I couldn’t get [mine] working in FP2 so I had the vest on but it wasn’t working”.
Antonelli sees untapped potential despite aborted lap
For rookie Antonelli, the final classification was deceiving. The young Italian had to abort his qualifying simulation on the soft tyre but was confident that the lap would have placed him much higher up on the order. He expressed a growing confidence in the ca and his own driving as he adapts to one of the most challenging tracks on the calendar.
“The result definitely didn’t show what we could have achieved because on the soft lap I had to abort the lap but we were on for a pretty good lap so to be honest I felt pretty good in the car,” Antonelli stated.
The Mercedes F1 driver added that he felt comfortable on the Singapore Grand Prix quickly, saying, “it’s a fun track with high downforce so it was pretty fun and I’ve been enjoying driving here so I felt quite at ease straight away”.
When asked if there was real potential in the car on a clean, low-fuel run, Antonelli was certain. “Yeah no for sure, I mean obviously it’s really hard to say where it would have put us but looking at the GPS we were up there but obviously we didn’t complete it so we’ll never know where we would have been but we still keep our head down and work on ourselves and try to improve for tomorrow”.
