P1 with Matt and Tommy - Reaction to Singapore GP practice

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

Join us as we recap a chaotic few practice sessions in the Singapore heat, with crashes and bizarre moments aplenty! The Delusion Tour is ONE MONTH AWAY! We're heading to North America in a few weeks and there are still a few tickets available - click here to grab yours: tix.to/p1liveYou can listen to an extended version of this weekend's race review podcast over on our Patreon! You'll also access to every P1 episode ad-free, early access to tickets & merch, and access to our Discord server where you can chat with us and other F1 fans! Click here to sign up now: http://patreon.com/mattp1tommyFollow us on socials! You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and TikTok. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everybody and welcome back to the P1 podcast with Matt and Tommy. Singapore Grand Prix has arrived. Friday practice is done and dusted. That's in the bin. Tommy's loving life that there's only one more practice session left until we get into the good stuff. The heat, the humidity, the night time. It's all arrived.

And our championship dreams of something wild maybe will be delivered as well this weekend, potentially. Who knows? Yes. And you say our championship dreams, collectively together because for audio listeners Matt is wearing a Max Verstappan t-shirt crazy scenes

look okay right so let me yeah let me let me just talk about that very quickly no you know that Charlotte Clark is my guy right I want him to win the World Championship for sure Ellie in fact bought both this and another for Stappan T-shirt as well because she's a big Max

Verstappan fan as she should be and it was oversized on her and I tried it on and was like wow, I'm going to wear it in the podcast. And here we are. Look, I said it before in predictions, I think it was, and I'll say it again. I'm here for something crazy. I want to see this championship reignited. I just want to have some drama. I want Max in the hunt. Yeah, he needs to be in the hunt, doesn't it? It's cool. It's cool. You know, I'm, everyone likes an underdog, and Max is somehow the underdog. What world are we in that Max is the underdog? He is. 69 points.

And yeah, look, I think it'll be fun to, you know, root for Stappen to get back in this championship. Charlotte Clare might end up winning Singapore. But then I think, you know, there'll be a part of me now that's like you, Tommy, and going, but Max has lost some points. Like, where are we right now? What's happening? What's happening is, yeah, the hype is insane. All the questions in the press conference ahead of it were like, what do you think to Max?

You know, it is this massive story. and he's so far behind and I think any other driver in that situation it wouldn't even be being spoken about because it's Max, you know, it does feel like he's lurking. He's lurking, the momentum's there as we've seen over the super September month for him.

And it's probably worth mentioning as well before we dive into everything free practice related this weekend and not just purely because Tommy's on camera, but it's been declared a heat hazard. for this Singapore Grand Prix weekend. Due to the hot temperatures, I know, looking at Tommy. Yeah, they just saw me.

They were like, damn, look at him in his, is a football top, isn't it? It's still a red ball. It's a red ball top. It's a football top. It's a football top. It's a football top. It's a football top. It's a football team.

It's a football jersey, isn't it? Yeah. Anyway, sorry, I'm getting distracted. Yeah, so it means that teams will be forced to use the driver calling system. They're not forced to use it. They're forced to install it. Yes. And then it's up to the driver, whether they actually.

use it or not? Yeah, a weird one, isn't it? They might not want to use it. You'd think you would in these conditions because, you know, what they've said about this track, we've seen these conditions, haven't we? Other circuits, and we had, I think Jensen Burton was talking about

different tracks and how, from his career, he's had races that have been unbelievably hot, but the thing with Singapore and what he was saying is you don't get many straits to kind of cool down and just stop. you know, it's such a physical track as well as the heat, and it's such a long race as well. It always goes on. You know, we've had Monza not that long ago, which was the shortest race in history.

Singapore, even when you don't have any yellow flags, it almost hits the two hour mark. So crazy. Yeah, it was an hour and 40 last year without a safety car. And you say not many straits. I mean, Singapore has changed now. We do have straits, but there's still no, there's no respite. It doesn't matter if they're on a straight or not. they're still in a cooker.

So that's the difficulty that these drivers have had. We have had Landa Norris last year, literally making two almost race-ending mistakes just out in front because it is such tough conditions out there. Right, let's dive into free practice one where, well, it was daytime. So not a huge amount to take from it in terms of the representation of the entire weekend. However, Fernando Alonso fastest, so will you say that that? is, you know, we can ignore that now. Maybe a daytime Singapore championship, Fernando Alonzo is world champion.

Bring it, bring it on. Although, spoiler alert to FP2, at least he was continuing to be quick in there. So it didn't seem like a... Imagine listening to our podcast. I know. That's the only way. You never know. But, yeah, Fernando is straight out the blocks and looking very quick, but we all know with

Singapore that it's not the most representative session because it's such different conditions going into the main action. You know, next year, of course, it's a sprint. So this will be the representative sessions for the sprint race, which could be quite interesting. But for here, it's not. I absolutely love how in predictions you were like, I've gone for Lance Stroll because I think, you know, Ashton Martin are going to be pretty good. And after FP1, Alonzo was first and Lance Stroll was almost two seconds behind Fernando. And you were just, you know, get a few points if Aston is still good.

And I just sat there going, okay, well, look, my good surprise, could be honestly cooking some serious amounts right now. And he does look very good indeed. Worth mentioning that at the beginning, Alex Albon, he only put two laps on the board. He had a brake fire, which was, seemed pretty uncomfortable, actually, for Alex in the car. You could see him sort of wiping his eye, holding his face a little bit. And I'm thinking, you know, the amount of fumes he's inhaling in there. And it can't be the greatest sort of breathing sensation what he was going through.

but thankfully he managed to get out in FP2 later on in the day. Indeed, yeah, not the best start for Williams. Although Carlos Sainz looked pretty decent today, so it's hard to know their pace because, yeah, particularly as we get into FP2, so crazy interrupted sessions that they had, the running kind of pecking order was a bit all over the place, really, wasn't it? Well, let's head into free practice too then, shall we, Tommy.

I didn't actually say the top three in free practice one. I just said Fernando Alonso, but it was Fernando Alonzo, Charlotte, Clare and Max Verstappen, and then the top three in FP2, Oscar Piastri, Isaac Hadjar, and Max Verstappen. So yeah, there was a lot of incidents to talk about, some minor, some pretty large. So why don't we start with the large one,

which I don't think many of us expected to talk about a collision in the pit lane, but that is what happened between Shao Lecler and Lando Norris. Lando Norris coming out of the garage. and swinging round and accelerating pretty quick to the pit lane speed limit, I would imagine. And Ferrari released Charlecler into the path of Lando Norris. Lando, or they make contact, Lando hits the wall ever so slightly on the sort of outside pit wall, damages his front wing. And as of recording right now, there is no penalty handed out.

And maybe we get a live reaction by the end of it. But right now, under investigation, in terms of the actual pay, penalty or non-penalty itself. We've seen unsafe releases in the past, and they have gone down as team fines. This one, I'm a little bit concerned. You could see it either way, couldn't you? I'm a little bit concerned because there's contact,

but I think the argument for Ferrari there is that Charles really couldn't have done anything in that situation. He was released, and when they're driving out the pit lane, they're not going to check right. They're not going to check both sides like you're crossing the road. you go because your team member tells you to that's what he did and it was a team mistake but then again we have team mistakes in competitive sessions

but that's different this is not a competitive session so I would like to lean more towards a team fine but I could also get very concerned about a three place yeah you can't put any blame on Charles I know it was quite funny watching the some people did yeah exactly we had the sky commentary here in the UK and Crofty was very quick to blame Charlotte Claire I think Ted Kravitz also kind of agreed

with him a little bit as well. They sounded angry. They sounded genuinely angry like they're done on purpose. Like you'd basically just gone out and Charlotte Claire was team Max of Stappen and wanting Max to win the championship and thought, I'm going to plough into the side of the McLaren and, you know, it's championship back on. But it was quite funny to

listen to the two Formula One drivers in Anthony Davidson and Jensen Burton jump on it immediately and be like, no. Like absolutely not. And, you know, you only have to play the Formula One game to know that you can't see anything is you come out the pits in a cockpit view, you just trust the mechanic. That's always

been the way that it has been in Formula One. The mechanic comes out, tells you when to go, and you have to just trust them because they're so enclosed, you can't really see what you're doing, and it is that responsibility of the team. In regards to the penalty, yes, it isn't Charlotte-Clau's fault, but it's not always the driver's fault, which means it's a penalty. So you could see it happening. You could see it happening. Yeah, but my argument there was competitive sessions is where we are looking at. This is not a competitive session. Yeah, and the fact that, and this is another thing we always say in this podcast that, you know,

you can't take the consequences into account. But, you know, it's not like it's, if it had been qualifying and Lando missed the opportunity to do, you know, the first part of qualifying and gets knocked out, there'd be so many calls for penalties and things. It would be this massive incident. And Ferrari, yeah, would probably. have got a hefty penalty there. So they might just, they could well get away with this one because it is a practice session.

So let's answer it. P1 Patreon member Fraxter, straight up asks, is that a grid penalty for Shal? As of recording, as I say, we don't know, but I am going to say no. I don't think you will get a penalty. I think that there will be a heavy team fine. But maybe that's my rose tinted glasses or my red tinted glasses, if you want to call them Ferrari ones, saying that. but I'm leaning more towards it not being a grid penalty.

Yeah, I'd be amazed if it was a grid penalty personally. I think that would be extremely harsh for a practice session for a pit lane incident. But that being said, I know it's not the start of qualifying where teams are all kind of pushing their way out, but something does need to happen with this because it's absolutely ridiculous. This keeps happening in Formula One. and the amount of risk these teams are taking for their car just to come out into the pack, it just seems so unnecessary to me. It is, but how we're going to have a green, yellow and red light system.

No, you go, then you go. And it's just, that's the nature of the pit lane, isn't it? It is chaotic. And Ferrari and Charlotte Claire did not mean to put Lando in the wall there. It's just sadly the nature of the circumstances, I would say. It's an interesting topic, isn't it, of like, is this the FIA's opportunity to stamp it out and say, look, well, actually, you are going to get a grid penalty and it might make teams a bit shocked and go, well, actually, no, I don't, we're not going to take the risk anymore. You could argue that that's their opportunity to, like, stamp it out. Now, there has been a really clumsy, silly collision.

Yeah, interesting. Hopefully for teams' sake, this doesn't happen in competitive sessions, because, yes, they will. get penalised a lot heavier. Other things that happened, George Russell, of course, he had a rather large crash, to be honest with you. I was going to say reasonably lucky with the fact that he didn't rip one of his wheels off. He sort of hit the wall at a very straight angle so that it wasn't like a Liam Lawson,

for example, where his front right came off. But for George, he said it was a very strange, very weird incident, caught him by surprise. A mistake, we don't tend to see George make too many mistakes, but we, you know, have seen it a few times now at Singapore. And yeah, it was just a pretty poor free practice two for Mercedes in general, 18th and 20. Yeah, you say he's lucky not to smash a wheel off or something, but realistically, the crash basically was a session over. So he only got six laps in, finished last.

So not that he may as well have ripped off a tire, but in terms of the fact that it was a, yeah, just why not? you're talking to me or the oh sorry yeah but yeah the George Russell incident yeah you don't I know people will go

oh yeah he's crushed at Singapore a few times and stuff but he has been one of the top drivers of the season is rare he's an experienced driver and yeah just it's a very shocking crash

initially when I saw that he had just his front wing off I assumed he'd just tap the barrier slowly and was on his way back but he went into the wall very heavily indeed. He certainly did. Another crash, as I sort of previously mentioned, was Liam Lawson,

which was just after where George Russell crashed, if I'm not mistaken, and just clipped the wall on the right-hand side after losing the back end ever so slightly, and that's all it takes. More than slightly, I think. Yeah, to be fair. He had a rather large drift, didn't he?

But we tend to see a lot of drivers hit their wheel sort of side to side with the wall and they get away with it. But sadly for him, him, I think the fronts are definitely a lot more fragile than the rear tires, maybe having a little slap of the wall, because, yeah, it was pretty much, it just flew off, didn't it? The tire just came immediately off, and his session was done as well. Yeah, we normally see that the car go wide there. We see it a lot, and sometimes, yeah, you get away with it when you just slap the wall with both tires. But the problem for Lawson is he got a massive snap, the rear came in, wallop the wallop the wall, and then the front came round and also wallop the wall up the wall. So essentially, you had both of his front tires. wall up the wall and yeah a quite

not humorous for Liam Lawson but a very strange scene where he was rolling back to the pits and then you basically saw his tire come past him later on which was very odd but disappointing for Lawson because he was looking quick and of course his teammate

and racing balls looking rapid again in a practice session and yeah I think Lawson was looking pretty good as well so disappointing for for him. Disappointing indeed, you're Hajar up in P2. A question from P1 patron member, DWV. Should red flags in practice stop the clock? Well, you know what I'm going to say on this? Absolutely not. The less time... You'd say to fast forward it. Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah. Yeah. One crash equals

10 seconds off practice and their punishment for crashing is less data. I do get the argument and I get the argument for, you know, the fans of paid their money to be there on the Friday. They should see as much running as possible, and it is unfortunate that they don't get to see it. And normally on other circuits, this argument would be the fact that there's maybe like a formula two practice session or qualifying or something later on or a race. So it's a very strict schedule. But for a track like Singapore where there's not so many supports and things like that, you do wonder if they could do something like that. But, you know, my, as someone that's on the

practice hate train I will say that no it's absolutely fine and the fact that they've got very little data from FP1 which is unrepresentative a very session that's kind of been scuppered a lot

where they didn't have much much running you know the most laps were really around 1920 laps and then we're going to go into FP3 which is another unrepresentative session makes it excited for qualifying, I think. Yeah, it does. Back to the point about stopping the clock. No, I don't think that should be the case at all.

Dragging on practice because of crashes or things that have happened, just no. And you can't change it case by case. You can't say, oh, Singapore has less of this, so therefore we can extend it here, but they're not there. It has to be a cut off at an hour. Otherwise, we could get very sillily. Sillory, that's a new word, long practice sessions, just because, yeah, they need to have a hard cut. And we like it. You just sort of touched upon it there, Tommy.

We like when they don't have as much data to go off because it makes for an unpredictable weekend. So as fans, as much as you might want to see the cars going round and round and round and not see the red flags, the end result is usually something quite exciting. When they don't know the tyre life. I think Lando Norris said after practice, he was basically alluded to the fact he hadn't done any heavy fuel running.

This sort of stuff is massive for the race. So I'm happy to see it be one hour and one hour only. P1PATR member R&B Sheep. Alonzo Win 33 incoming. Stop it. I mean, he was on a sensational lap before the first red flag. I think it wasn't in free practice too. I am not going to get too ahead of myself and Tommy definitely not with his self,

as he's a big Fernando Alonzo fan. what I will say is that very much up there in sort of I would say P6 P7 territory if Mercedes are genuinely struggling which to be honest with you they've not really done a huge amount in this practice

or this Friday practice so for me I think Fernando could easily bag himself gosh could he even get into the top five I don't know but it's it's a really difficult track to make something happen and mistakes are as we've seen today

so easy to happen as well. And the fact that I've predicted no yellow flags in the race, I want to just withdraw and retract that. I think it might be a yellow flag after sort of turn two lap one at this point because there are a lot of mistakes out there. It's, yeah, it's difficult.

But I don't think there's a win coming for Alonzo, but I'd like to see a good handful of points. Yeah, win would be a huge stretch. McLaren, obviously, looking very quick indeed. Max looks up there. Ferrari, surprisingly for me, Ferrari don't look as quick as I thought they might be. I know it's only, you know, it's a very unusual session, so we'll find out more in qualifying, but of course, if Ferrari were good at Monaco, Charlotte-Clair getting pole at Hungary as well,

so you thought this circuit would suit them more. So I'm surprised they're not higher up the order. As for Mercedes, yeah, they're looking like they're struggling at a lot of the moment. So yeah, maybe a kind of top four, top five for Alonzo and be that best of the rest behind, to potentially the McLarence and Maxfuss-Tappen maybe. But Alonso is so good at this track. You know, if I hadn't gone for Lance Stroll, biggest surprise, mainly just because I joked in the podcast that the bar was low,

I would have gone for Alonzo because, you know, it's not even just the fact that the Aston Martin was always going to run well here because of the fact that they did well at Hungary. Singapore is such a Fernando Alonzo track, and I know people will jump on and go, well in 2008 he won it because of you know crushgate and all that kind of stuff which he of course did but he was very very quick in that race still a great drive it's still a great drive it's very very quick in the race he was actually yeah he was actually you know challenging um at the front

in a car that shouldn't have been there and qualifying before an incident that put him all the way down in 14th the year afterwards he was on the podium for reno in an absolutely abysmal reno you know beat Sebastian Vettel in 2010. He's had so many good results here. So he is very, very good around here. So it is like a specialist circuit as well as it's suiting the Aston Martin, so I wouldn't put it past Alonzo doing something. And you went for Lance Stroll. And I went for, well, I couldn't go for the same anyway, could I? No, true, very true. Although I'm surprised you didn't try and lock it in anyway. I don't have to announce it. A question from Berkey Ahern. Lando seems very down and frustrated. Is he too quick to blame himself?

yes and no I mean I think it's just time to accept that some drivers have different mentalities some drivers like to do this and this is how they you know perform

and if Lando ends up winning the World Championship with this mentality then you know it shouldn't be put into question every driver's different so you know I get there is a lot of talk of like

is it is it a healthy thing to be so self-critical and put that blame on yourself that much. But we do see this trend a lot with the kind of more modern drivers. So Charlotte Claire is another great example with, you know, the I am stupid thing. Like these drivers are very self-critical. And yeah, I heard his frustrations at the end, of course, and it was a little bit like, okay, he's very frustrated and seemed like a bit annoyed.

Yeah, so basically Lando was getting, he had his, lap at the end, he was half a second off Piastri, and his race engineer basically said to him that we could do another lap, and he basically said, my car's not half a second off, is it, my driving's half a second off? So, no, so a little bit more context on that was that, I think Will Joseph asked for a continuous lap, so that he wanted another lap immediately without having recharge the battery. That was my understanding, which again was, I think Will was sort of saying that perhaps there was time missing and he wanted more data to then be able to extract it. Whereas Lando was saying, well, no, I'm not half a second down because of the car.

I'm half a second down because of my driving. So I think there was a little bit of like a disagreement of what the run plan should be for that final bit. I think Lando probably just wanted to recharge the battery fully and go again. I don't actually know what happened in the end, but I know he made a mistake because we were watching an offboard but with no times because that's just. Yeah, he ran wide, didn't he? times go. But the curb and did the kind of Tony Hawk skateboarding across the curve that we see some sometimes.

That curve is basically a gravel trap. It's just your time just goes if you if you skate around that. But back to the question and the comment about Lando. Yeah, he's, he feels quite withdrawn. I think in, you know, in interviews, I feel like he's sort of just trying to avoid exploding landmines wherever, whenever a question is asked to him. And then obviously the team radio, it's just, yeah, that is just. how he is. You know, he's an emotional driver, he feels it, and, you know, there's a lot of pressure

on him. It still is. You know, talking about Max Verstappen and things like that. Lando is also trying to challenge for the championship, and he's a race win behind his teammate. So this is how he deals with at the moment, whether in five years' time this will be the same way he deals with a situation like this. Who knows? There's a lot of learnings going on. But it's only practice. Like, he's allowed to be as critical or not critical as he wants. Next question. Pee-on-Pitch, remember A Good Karen. Lots of talk about how much Norris loves Singapore and yet Piastri ahead in free practice one

and top of free practice two. Championship back off. Here we go. Here we go. Well, at times during practice, maybe in the earlier stages, Oscar was the one that appeared to be building up a little bit more. Lando was looking quick.

But yeah, Oscar managed clearly a lap that made Lando have a little bit of doubts, as we heard over the team radio. But a great bounce back for Oscar so far around a very difficult circus. We wonder, didn't we, after Baku, how he'd be feeling. But I think the pressure cooker is ramped up a thousand levels when we get to tomorrow and qualifying in particular.

So for now, Oscar has shown that, yes, he's still got the speed that we've seen the entire season bar Baku. And yes, the McLaren is also probably the fastest car this weekend, which is no surprise to anybody. I don't think the championship's back off by any stretch, though. No, definitely not. People are so quick to write Landon Orosov immediately. you know, this is a practice session.

Look at Monser, I think it was, where, you know, he was looking like he was struggling a lot and he struggled all the way through that entire qualifying session and then he beat Piazri in the session. And we've seen that between Piazri and Norris quite a lot this season where one of them may be really good in practice and then the other one gets into qualifying and surprises the other one. And that's happened both sides of the coin here, but between the two of them. So yeah, Singapore, yeah, maybe, maybe Lando hasn't had that immediate confidence based on, you know, how good he was last year and maybe my opinion that he was going to potentially walk, walk this

race and it'd be quite a comfortable victory for him. Doesn't look like the case, but it is only practice. And, you know, he may well still put it on pole, McLaren looking very quick, and then lead away and win. So you can't just kind of take maybe a difficult day in practice because we've seen it turn so many times this season. Importantly, Lando did say after all the running today that he didn't have the same feeling as he had last year with the car. As of right this second, he doesn't have that. Of course, this is what practice is all about. The team go away and they analyze the somewhat restricted data from today and tried to make the car better. How many times does Max Stauffin gone?

This is the worst car I've ever driven and then gets poll the next day. Exactly. And Max, well, let's end it there because I'm a massive Max for Stappan fan, as you can see by my t-shirt these days. Is he in the hunt with the McLaren's? Is he in the hunt for the victory? I would say, look, actually, before I answer this question, Tommy, people have picked up on the fact that whenever we don't talk about Max on Friday, he does really well and potentially wins. Okay. This has happened the entirety of September.

So, in fact, we're not answering this question and we'll see you tomorrow for quality of qualify how does that sound goodbye tell me what are your final thoughts then my final thoughts are who was p3 yeah I don't know who was p3 can't remember yeah cool right see you tomorrow looking forward to join us for qualifying perfect well there you go we'll be live on Twitch and YouTube

for people on Tommy if you want to come and watch along to qualifying on the race this weekend and we will see you there not going to talk about the guy right here bye I pointed to my shirt for audio listeners I can't believe we literally just cut off a question for the sake of potentially a jinx. But we did it anyway. I'm going to do it anyway.

Such a niche reference, my God. Oh dear. P1 is a stack production and part of the ACAST's creator network.