\u201cI found my feet on the medium at the end there and then the soft felt good,\u201d said Piastri, who lamented that 22 minutes of the session were lost to stoppages.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously not much representative race running,\u201d said the Australian, who leads the title race by 25 points from his McLaren teammate Lando Norris, and by 69 over Max Verstappen in third.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1759535888_361_poster-fallback.png\"\/)
<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the car\u2019s been in a good place, and I feel like I\u2019ve learned a lot today. That\u2019s the aim of practice. So it\u2019s been a good day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pitlane CHAOS as Leclerc rams Norris! | 01:21<\/p>\n
It came after an opening session that maybe saw the pressure getting to him to start this weekend, after he fired off a quick spray at seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton. <\/p>\n
With just over 14 minutes remaining in the hour-long opening practice session, Piastri had only recorded the eighth fastest time when he was attempting to set a fast lap.<\/p>\n
Right as the Aussie began his flying lap, he came across Ferrari veteran Lewis Hamilton, who appeared to do his best to get out of the way, pulling right over to the right of the track. <\/p>\n
Yet Piastri still wasn\u2019t pleased, saying over team radio: \u201cFerrari will invent mirrors one day, I hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sky Sports commentators then debated the moment as they watched a series of replays.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is on board with Lewis, and we do see him look in his mirrors on the left, don\u2019t you, just before Oscar gets there,\u201d Rachel Brookes said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo he sees him and gets out of the way, but you think he should have seen him sooner?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jensen Button seemed to have a bet each way when he replied: \u201cAh, yes. He was on a slow lap.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the thing to do it seems, which has only been the last couple of years, but as soon as they cross that finish line, they move to the inside, don\u2019t they, and slow down.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I still feel he moved out of the way. It\u2019s not nice having a car on the outside because if you lock up you end up in them.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut he still had a clear run.\u201d<\/p>\n
SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE – OCTOBER 03: Oscar Piastri of Australia and McLaren prior to practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Singapore at Marina Bay Street Circuit on October 03, 2025 in Singapore, Singapore. (Photo by Clive Mason\/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
The session was first halted by George Russell crashing his Mercedes at turn 16. When the cars got going again, RB\u2019s Liam Lawson found the barriers on the penultimate corner to bring out another red flag.<\/p>\n
As cars vied for position in the pit lane for the restart Charles Leclerc\u2019s Ferrari was released into Norris, shunting the McLaren into the pit lane wall.<\/p>\n
The McLaren was hastily pushed back into its box to fit a new front wing with Norris eventually fifth fastest.<\/p>\n
He was sandwiched by the Aston Martins of Fernando Alonso in fourth and Lance Stroll in sixth.<\/p>\n
– \u2018Difficult day\u2019 for Norris –<\/p>\n
\u201cCost the team a bit of money, which is a shame,\u201d said Norris, who was a dominant winner at last year\u2019s Singapore Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a difficult day for me, not feeling too great with the car. I\u2019m missing all of the feelings I had here last year. So plenty of things to work on. Just a bad day.<\/p>\n
\u201cOscar\u2019s quick so I\u2019ve got nothing to complain about, bar just not doing a very good job,\u201d said Norris.<\/p>\n
Esteban Ocon, Carlos Sainz, Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton rounded out the top 10. Verstappen has won the last two races, in Monza and Baku, to edge into the title picture with seven races and three sprints to go.<\/p>\n
But four-time world champion Verstappen, runner-up to Norris last year, has never won in Singapore in eight previous attempts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just getting up to speed with things, but the car was not too bad. In general, I was quite satisfied,\u201d said Verstappen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe definitely need a bit more pace to fight up at the front tomorrow.\u201d Russell was at a loss to explain his crash.<\/p>\n
\u201cA bit of a weird one to be honest,\u201d said the Mercedes driver. \u201cThankfully I went in front-end on and didn\u2019t do too much damage, but it was game over.\u201d<\/p>\n
– \u2018Heat Hazard\u2019 –<\/p>\n
The race was on Thursday declared an official Formula One \u201cHeat Hazard\u201d, invoking a new rule to help drivers beat the tropical heat in Singapore.<\/p>\n
It means drivers will be able to wear newly developed cooling vests because ambient temperatures are expected to be 31 Celsius or higher.<\/p>\n
Many drivers were seen trying out the vests and their associated maze of cooling tubes under their fireproof race suits.<\/p>\n
The air temperature for both Saturday sessions hovered around 28C, cooler than usual in Singapore, but with humidity at a very uncomfortable 80 percent.<\/p>\n
In first practice, Alex Albon was forced to retire after less than 10 minutes when the rear brakes on his Williams caught fire.<\/p>\n
His engineers managed to rebuild the car in time for the second session where Albon finished 13th. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Championship leader Oscar Piastri went fastest Saturday (AEST) in a chaotic second practice session for the Singapore Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[1724,64,63,120033,4971,22777,13275,22304,2057,817,845,13038,120030,813,816,20675,75747,3875,2105,2328,1737,825,932,120031,120028,120026,22297,120027,42720,119696,120029,20587,942,2643,2812,3595,85,36772,80068,120032,22294,2753],"class_list":["post-189042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-asia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bizarre-pit","tag-carlos-sainz","tag-championship-leader","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-esteban-ocon","tag-europe","tag-f1","tag-fernando-alonso","tag-finish-line","tag-fireproof-race-suits","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-four-time-world-champion","tag-front-wing","tag-george-russell","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-italy","tag-lando-norris","tag-max-verstappen","tag-monza","tag-motorsport-news","tag-pit-lane-shunt","tag-pit-lane-wall","tag-practice-session","tag-pressure-getting","tag-red-flags","tag-representative-race-running","tag-sessions-recap","tag-seven-time-world-champion","tag-singapore","tag-sky-sports","tag-south-eastern-asia","tag-southern-europe","tag-sports","tag-team-radio","tag-time-sheets","tag-title-picture","tag-title-race","tag-world-champion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}