A Significant Reset' - Teams prepare for unique Singapore challenge

18 March 2019, Singapore - Fresh from the classic, sweeping surrounds of Spa-Francorchamps and Monza, the ten Formula 1 teams this weekend face what Pirelli’s Head of F1 and Car Racing Mario Isola calls ‘a significant reset’ when they visit Singapore for the 12^th time. This year, the spectacular Marina Bay Street Circuit has an additional DRS Zone after Turn 13, making it three in total, with the others being the zones after Turn 5 and Turn 23.

Pirelli’s tyres – Hard, Medium and Soft are the compounds on offer – are not the only components that will face extreme stresses during 61 laps of the 23-corner, 5.063-kilometre track.

“It’s the most physically demanding race of the year,” says Haas driver Kevin Magnussen – and K-Mag should know, as he holds the lap record at 1 minute 41.905 seconds.

“It’s really a physical race for a few different reasons,’ explains F1’s Great Dane, who will turn 27 two weeks after this year’s Singapore race. “One, it’s really hot. Two, you don’t ever really get any rest on the lap. You’re constantly working the steering wheel. There’s not a lot of straight line on the track. Three, because the average speed of a lap is so slow, the race usually goes to the two-hour limit.”

So does everything else, as Red Bull’s Max Verstappen is quick to point out. “I really like this kind of weekend,” says Verstappen, who finished second here last year, “as it’s so different to a normal race. The track is very demanding – it’s hot, it’s physical and you sweat a lot, but it’s one of my favourites.”

And at this stage Max, a two-time winner this season, is looking no farther ahead than Saturday. “Overtaking is very tricky,” he adds, “so qualifying is the key – you have to nail it!”

Verstappen is on his second new teammate of 2019 following Red Bull’s decision to promote 22-year-old Alexander Albon from ‘junior’ team Toro Rosso for the last nine races of the year and demote Pierre Gasly.

“I’m interested to see what it’s all about,” says Thai-British driver Albon of Singapore, where he expects family and friends from his nearby homeland to swell the ranks of spectators. “It will be good fun, especially as I’ve never raced anywhere quite like it before.” He said it…

By the way, if K-Mag sets fastest race lap again, and finishes in the top ten, he will score an extra point for that feat, a rule brought in this season that has already added late-race spice to several rounds of the 2019 World Championship.

Two men arrive in Singapore with four race wins here to their credit, but they could hardly arrive in different moods. Lewis Hamilton once again leads the drivers’ standings, 63 points clear of Mercedes sidekick Valtteri Bottas.

Hamilton is unfazed by defeat in the last two rounds: “I’m not looking to the next race thinking it will be easy for us,” he maintains, “instead we’re going to go to the factory and go through the same process, looking for ways to improve our car, improve our processes over a race weekend, and I hope that I can do a better job in Singapore.”

So does Sebastian Vettel, our other four-time winner, who has slipped to fifth overall and now sits behind new Ferrari partner Charles Leclerc, who took his first wins for the scarlet team in Belgium and Italy.

“This moment must be so dark for him,” said 2016 World Champion Nico Rosberg of Vettel after Monza, where his German compatriot incurred the wrath of officialdom for an unsafe re-entry to the track following a spin. “His teammate just became an absolute Ferrari legend and has taken the number-one status in the team, probably, from him.”

But a defiant Vettel comes to Marina Bay ready to disprove his growing army of critics. “The speed is there so I am not worried,’ claims the 32-year-old. “It’s just a matter of putting things together.”

Leclerc, still just 21, has put things together so well in his first season with Ferrari that he lies just three points behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen as they head into the final, fly-away phase of the 21-race season.

After Monza, where he became the first Ferrari man to win since 2010, Leclerc may have to change his tune about his ‘normal’ approach to an event. “When I arrive at a race weekend I usually don’t think about winning,” claimed the young Monegasque, “I just try to do the best job possible and tell myself that the results will come.” Yeah, right, Charles…

While Leclerc looks to become just the fifth driver to tame the Lion City, the midfield battle grows fiercer with each race. McLaren are currently ‘best of the rest’ behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull, but a resurgent Renault are desperate to hunt them down.

“It’s been bumpy this year,” admits the Anglo-French team’s principal Cyril Abiteboul, who oversaw Renault’s best result, not just this year but since their F1 return in 2016, when Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Hülkenberg finished fourth and fifth respectively in Italy last time out.

But Abiteboul is not getting carried away: “The weaknesses of the car are still here,” he added. “That’s why I’m not overjoyed, because I know there will be tough times ahead of us in the season.” Starting right here, right now…

Abiteboul’s McLaren counterpart Andreas Seidl is not getting carried away either. “Of course we want to fight for this P4 [in the Constructors’ Championship] as long as possible,” he claims, “but at the same time for us it’s a lot more important to make the next step with next year’s car. So I don’t want to compromise next year…”

Further back in the standings, Alfa Romeo Racing’s Frédéric Vasseur is also looking to build on his young driver Antonio Giovinazzi’s best F1 result to date, a ninth place in Monza two weeks ago, but he knows the pitfalls that lie ahead.

“Singapore is a weekend that asks a lot from everyone in the team,” says Vasseur. “The margins in the midfield are very small, even on a relatively long lap like in Singapore, and every detail makes a difference.”

Searching for the details that may help him get back to the ‘senior’ Red Bull team after his shock return to Toro Rosso in the summer, Pierre Gasly hopes Marina Bay may be just the place for him.

“The lap runs at a high pace with loads of corners,” says the 23-year-old French driver, “so you don’t pause for breath. But I like that. I love very technical, twisty tracks where you have to get into a rhythm.”

And Gasly – for whom two fastest laps in China and Monaco were among his Red Bull highlights – sums up Singapore to perfection.

“Maybe it’s the most difficult race of the season,” he says, “but it’s also the most exciting.”