F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Singapore Speed Trap: who is the fastest of them all?

Singapore's Marina Bay circuit offers many challenges, but straight-line speed isn't among the venue's most important factors.

As a maximum down force track, Marina Bay's average speed is only 13km/h higher than at Monaco, so the engineering emphasis is on slow-speed grip, good turn-in and traction.

A look at the speed trap readings from qualifying shows us that Ferrari - despite its SF71-H speeding down through the night down Raffles Boulevard faster than any other car - still came up short overall against Mercedes.

At the other end of the spectrum, one will note the rather depressed top speed of Max Verstappen despite the Red Bull driver's fantastic runner-up spot in qualifying.

The Dutchman has been complaining all weekend of a chronic issue impacting his new Spec-C Renault power unit. The readings here clearly confirm the legitimacy of his frustrations, and his incredible ability to surmount the problem.

Max lost 0.45s on the straights, but ended up 0.31s off pole. Enough said...

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

 

Michael Delaney

Recent Posts

Hamilton in no doubt Ferrari is ‘going to get there’

Lewis Hamilton believes Ferrari are edging ever closer to returning to the top step of…

2 hours ago

McLaren reserve Fornaroli to take part in FP1 in Barcelona

After years of climbing the junior racing ladder and a championship-winning Formula 2 campaign that…

18 hours ago

Williams hands Browning FP1 outings in Barcelona and Austria

Williams has confirmed that its reserve driver Luke Browning will take part in not one…

19 hours ago

Hadjar battled ‘undriveable’ RB22 in Monaco GP but ‘kept pushing’

When Isack Hadjar climbed onto the Monaco Grand Prix podium, the result told only part…

20 hours ago

Bruce puts win #1 on McLaren's books

In the midst of McLaren 1000th Grand Prix celebrations,  we hark back to this day…

22 hours ago

Verstappen ‘still a bit surprised’ by Monaco qualifying pace

Max Verstappen has moved to cool expectations around Red Bull’s strong form in Monaco qualifying,…

23 hours ago