Friday: Buemi in the wall, Alguersuari uncomfortable

Jaime Alguersuari – 12th and 11th

I am very happy to be back in Singapore once again because I love the circuit and the special atmosphere, driving at night. As usual on the first day, the grip level is very low and, in general, I wasn’t happy with the car and never felt comfortable with it today. Because we weren’t able to run all the necessary time, we don’t yet have a precise idea of the behavior of the soft (red) tires over long stints and we need to know if degradation will be a factor to consider. I think the track was dirtier today than at the same time last year, which didn’t help us, although the track seemed less bumpy, especially in turn 7. Apart from that, the only change was made this morning on the curbs. We still have a session to improve the car for qualifying, which will be a more important session than in many other races this season, because overtaking on a street circuit is always very difficult. This morning, I didn’t hit any walls, but I did climb the curbs very aggressively and the team called me back before the end of practice to check the car, as a precaution.

Sebastien Buemi – 17th and 19th

The morning session was delayed because they modified the curbs at a few places on the track and, initially, we had to adapt to the new lines made possible by these changes. We completed a good number of laps during the first practice session, which allowed us to get a good feel for how the soft tires were behaving. The degradation seemed quite significant, but that’s normal here on a Friday. In the second session, I did two additional stints on the hardest tires (yellow), but when I switched to the super softs, I had a big lap and made a small mistake coming out of the last chicane and hit the wall. My session ended prematurely, but I hope we’ll be ready for qualifying tomorrow. The car isn’t too bad here, and as we saw at Monza, even if things don’t go very well on Friday, we can still have a good race.