Singapore Grand Prix 2015 - Practice 1 Analysis. Alexander Rossi crashes on F1 debut.

The first practice session for the Singapore Grand Prix was relatively uneventful as we finally saw Nico Rosberg in front of team mate Lewis Hamilton. The Mercedes star man Hamilton was a mere 3 tenths off the pace of his team mate and had a Red Bull breathing down his neck for P2.

Nico Rosberg topped the session

The 1 and half practice session isn't the most important as it is held at different times to the highly important qualifying and race. This means tire deg and chassis balance are very different in this session,

We once again saw Mercedes on top as usual, but as mentioned earlier it wasn't a Ferrari that took the best of the rest. Many people expected Red Bull to be strong at the street circuit and Daniel Ricciardo didn't disappoint finishing just a few hundredths off Lewis Hamilton in P2. It wasn't all good for Red Bull though as Daniil Kvyat was kept in the garage for a majority of the session with a fuel flow problem. He only managed 8 laps which only resulted in 18th place.

Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull finished in P3.

Ferrari came next as they were a few tenths off the pace of Ricciardo. Sebastian Vettel led home team mate Kimi Raikkonen in P4 and P5. You could tell all session Sebastian Vettel was pushing really hard as he was leaving just millimeters between the wall at Turn 21.

In 6th place was quite surprisingly, Valtteri Bottas, Williams are very known for running higher fuel and conserving engines in Friday session, and usually find themselves outside the top 10. This should hopefully give Bottas some real confidence heading into the rest of the weekend as he is looking to get the edge over Felipe Massa who is currently beating him in Drivers Championship by 6 points. Massa does has some ground to make up on his Finnish team mate after he could only managed 17th place.

Next was Toro Rosso in 7th and 9th split by the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg. Toro Rosso will be looking for strong points here as they have the chassis to do so. Max Verstappen led home Carlos Sainz with a mammoth 6 tenths gap between 7th and 9th. Hulkenberg in 8th was 4 tenths adrift of Verstappen.

Sauber and McLaren definitely didn't show any real pace only managing 13th and 16th, and 11th and 15th respectively. McLaren are definitely looking stronger than the previous races in Monza and Spa.

Fernando Alonso of McLaren

The session was very boring and very minimal action happened right up till the end. The session ended with a red flag from the new boy of Alexander Rossi in the Manor-Marussia. As he went under the grandstand the youngster appeared to take a little too much speed and over-steered into the wall breaking both his front and rear right suspension. He will be lucky to get any running FP2 as it is a timely repair job.

However all of these times are very irrelevant (as mentioned earlier) with the time of the session not matching the time of qualifying and the race. For me I'll really be interested in the pace of FP2, held at similar times to when the Qualifying and Race is.

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