Hamilton tops shortened first practice

F1 Grand Prix, GP Singapore, Marina Bay Street Circuit

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time during the first session at Singapore. The session though was dominated by track issues, as it was first delayed to repair a kerb, while later on it was red-flagged shortly for another repair of the same curbstone.

When the session finally got underway, it was announced it would last only 60 minutes instead of the usual 90 in order to maintain the gap between FP1 and FP2.

As usual, many drivers completed an lap early on in the session to confirm everything in the car is working properly.

After that, the Lotus cars were the first on track, but Heikki Kovalainen saw his session end early as he stopped alongside the track with his front brake discs on fire. It appears the discs his 1000°C and cought fire.

Timo Glock also saw his session end early. After first suffering brake problems on his warm-up lap, he pitted to have the brakes adjusted. When back out on track, Mark Webber came up behind him and was hesitant to overtake Glock. The German therefore decided to take the normal line into a lefthander and thereby clipped a front wing endplate of Mark Webber's Red Bull RB7. Glock suffered a rear puncture and abandoned the session in the pits as his team did not want to use any more sets of tyres.

In the meantime, Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher took the early lead in the session. Vettel took over at the halfway mark but it was Lewis Hamilton who eventually posted the fastest lap.