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Rossi 'quite upset' by FP1 crash

Alexander Rossi admits he was "quite upset" by his crash in FP1 for the Singapore Grand Prix but believes he will bounce back on Saturday.

The Manor debutant crashed at Turn 18 late in the opening session of the weekend, damaging the right hand side of his car. The damage was heavy enough to rule out Rossi for the majority of the second session and he admits he was disappointed to make a mistake at such an early stage.

"We were trying a couple of new things and I didn’t really expect the change to be as extreme as it was," Rossi said. "It was a small mistake but a big consequence because of where it was. But such is life sometimes. The team has moved on from it, I’ve moved on from it. They did a great job to get the car back out for FP2. We just need to learn from it.

"I was quite upset to be honest, it’s not what you want to do in your first session."

However, Rossi believes he saw enough from the running he did get to suggest he will be strong in qualifying and will only need to work on race set-up in FP3.

“I’m really confident in terms of our ability in qualifying. I’m really feeling quite good about that. The race is an unknown at the moment, so hopefully we can have a good FP3 tomorrow and we are able to get quite a few laps under our belts to see how the tyres work round here.

"I mean obviously that’s the main talking point of the year but especially round here with the temperatures and everything it’s going to be quite a challenge. So I think we need to understand where we stand with that and right now it’s a bit of a mystery.”

Asked if he thinks he can get the better of team-mate Will Stevens in qualifying, Rossi replied: “Yeah, I think so.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.