Williams drivers Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon have experienced rather different Fridays while preparing for the F1 Singapore GP with two Practice sessions. While one side of the garage was left distraught after serious car issues, the other showed instead promising pace and speed.
Heartbreak for Albon ahead of the 2025 F1 Singapore GP
It was a particularly challenging day for Williams’s Albon, especially considering the lack of track time he suffered from. In fact, the British-Thai driver’s FW47 caught fire right at the beginning of FP1, forcing him to sit out the entire session. The afternoon was as chaotic as the morning, with two red flags caused by Russell and Lawson’s crashes.
Williams driver pairing Sainz Albon was deeply upset about his day, as he described the frustration he felt ahead of the F1 Singapore GP
“One of the worst Fridays of the year for sure. Lots of red flags, lots of yellow flags, so I never really did a lap. I feel like… I feel like if I stayed at home today and arrived tomorrow I’d be none the wiser. Yeah, we’ll see what we have but, uh, that’s it.”
Not enough track time
Disappointment for the missed chance of testing the car, and especially of finding the best setup for Qualifying, is clear in Albon’s words.
“”Normally on 95% of the tracks we go to this year, it’s not an issue. But because this track is so peaky the tyres have such a small window basically. Unless you heat them on the first lap, the subsequent laps then it’s not useless but you’re basically not learning anything.”
The lack of information is more significant at the particular Marina Bay circuit in Singapore, even more so considering the environmental heated conditions which will pose on their own a huge physical threat for all drivers.
“If anything you lose confidence because the grip drops off, andyou keep trying to to learn the circuit, so that’s why it’s so important to get laps around here. It was very disjointed but we’ll try and learn from the other car. I think Carlos had a pretty good day, so so we’ll see from there.”
Asked on what will be his goals at this points for the final Practice session of the weekend, which will feature radically different lighting and temperatures compared to both the race and qualifying afterwards, Albon was again rather downbeat.
”Um, yeah, we’re not sure. We did a lot of test sessions on top of on the car as well on top of everything else, so we have got to kind of see if we can understand what we tried and what worked and what didn’t. But again, we’re most probably going to return to like a normal car, just restart the day, have a good sleep and go again.”
Strong day for Sainz
At the other side of the Williams garage, Sainz had a better streak of luck compared to Albon as he actually managed to practice for the F1 Singapore GP. In fact, the Spaniard managed to end both practice sessions in the top 10, putting in a lot of laps to get to know his challenger and its behaviour in the intense weather conditions.
Nevertheless, Sainz was not completely satisfied with his day and performance, mentioning his worse feeling in FP2.
“We have been relatively competitive, the two sessions being always within the top 8, top 6 cars which is encouraging to start the weekend. Unfortunately, for FP2 we went in a set-up direction that I didn’t really like so, maybe, revert and have something more like in FP1 which was giving me a bit more confidence.”
“Then our usual challenges on the soft tyre again appeared a bit. We are very competitive on mediums but, as soon as we switched to softs, we were starting to struggle. So, those two things mainly will be the homework tonight.”
Historically, in Singapore Qualifying has often been the main focus for all racing drivers involved, considering the peculiarities of the track layout and the intense atmospheric conditions. In Sainz’s opinion, the majority of the drivers will follow the same approach ahead of the 2025 F1 Singapore GP.
“To be honest, here it’s always you bias everything towards qualifying, as you know it’s usually a one-stop, easy one-stop race and just qualifying position is everything. So I’m not too concerned about that, it’s more getting to a rhythm and making sure we do the right set-up changes both on set-up and on tyres.”
