Lewis Hamilton showed his intention to make up for his disappointing Monza weekend by setting the fastest time in a truncated first practice under the lights in Singapore, the session overshadowed by problems with the kerbing on the track which caused running to be shortened by 30 minutes and prompted a late red flag.
As darkness began to descend around the city-state into Friday evening, race control delayed the start of what was scheduled to be the normal 90 minutes of running after problems with the kerbing at turns three and 14 was identified following an earlier Porsche Carrera Cup support session around the street track.
Some of the temporary pieces of kerbing laid down for the weekend had worked their way loose and, following a first-hand inspection by FIA race director Charlie Whiting, it was decided to remove the kerbs at both corners altogether before cars could go out onto the circuit.
With the work taking around half an hour to complete, Whiting decided that rather than eat further into what was already a shorter-than-normal break between the Friday sessions, first practice would run to one-hour only.
The following 50 minutes proved largely incident-free – aside from a brief red-flag stoppage for Heikki Kovalainen’s Lotus after his car stopped on circuit and the brakes caught fire – before with seven minutes to go Felipe Massa dislodged another piece of kerbing when he ran over the kerbs on the short straight betweens turns seven and eight in his Ferrari, prompting another stoppage while the latest offending piece was removed.
In between the stoppages, it was McLaren’s Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel – who can clinch his second straight title if results go his way this weekend – who battled for the fastest time, the former eventually emerging on top by 0.406s with a 1m48.599s.
Mark Webber took third in the second Red Bull, albeit some 1.4s off the pace, having earlier had a brief run-in with Timo Glock’s Virgin which saw him break his RB7’s front-wing endplate against the Virgin’s left-rear tyre following a mix-up at the penultimate corner.
Two-time Singapore winner Fernando Alonso was fourth in the lead Ferrari, which featured flo-vis paint on both its front and rear wing, with McLaren’s Jenson Button fifth and Massa sixth.
Once the shortened session had got underway the temporary 3.15-mile floodlit track was in its usual dusty state for the first action of the grand prix weekend, Nico Rosberg’s initial benchmark effort of 1m57.351s nearly nine seconds slower than Hamilton’s ultimate effort.
The times soon tumbled quickly, however, first courtesy of the other Mercedes of Michael Schumacher (1m55.827s) and Massa (1m53.770s) before Webber became the first man into the 1m52s.
However, the Australian soon found himself having to abort his opening run after tangling with Glock’s much slower Virgin towards the end of the lap.
Webber had stalked the German for several corners to no avail and then as he tentatively put his car up the inside the left-handed turn 22, Glock turned in to take his racing line and the Red Bull’s left front-wing end plate pierced the Virgin’s left-rear tyre, puncturing it and sending debris onto the circuit.
In real terms the pair didn’t lose substantial track time for their repairs as almost immediately the red flag was dropped as Kovalainen’s Lotus stopped on the track at turn 18 with a gearbox problem.
Overheating problems had also caught his brakes to catch fire but, unlike last year when Kovalainen had to turn fire-fighter when his car also caught alight during the race, fire marshals were on the scene and splattered the front wheels with extinguisher foam.
After a five-minute stoppage, the session got back underway in earnest with McLaren, who had only completed installation laps in the opening half an hour, moving to the front courtesy of Jenson Button on 1m50.952s.
Vettel then showed his hand for the first time in the session and immediately found chunks more time, pumping in two fast laps to move down to a 1m49.646s, before Hamilton retaliated with a 1m49.515s.
The championship leader then found a full half a second more to seemingly settle the fight, yet Hamilton still had more speed in hand and uncorked his session-settling 1m48.599s.
The subsequent Massa kerb incident, which sent the Brazilian scurrying down the escape road, ensured no further changes to the top of the charts when the session was restarted with minutes to go once more, although the two Force Indias encouragingly managed to sandwhich the lead Mercedes of Schumacher at the bottom end of the top 10.
Several drivers had near-misses with the omnipresent walls – notably Williams Pastor Maldonado right at the end of the session – while Schumacher and Adrian Sutil were too drivers to lock up at the chicane and run straight on.
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