Sprint and grand prix, Antonelli seeks the decisive push for the world title while Ferrari wants to exploit the characteristics of the street circuit
From Sepang in SingaporeFormula 1 in this finale of 2027 has no time to stop. The next grand prix on a street circuit could finally favor a return of Ferrari to the highest levels, but in the meantime at Mercedes there continues to be many doubts about the reliability of the car after George Russell he was left stranded a few laps from the end of the Bahrain Grand Prix. The Briton is expected to have a very busy weekend because the engine change will force him to serve the penalty, starting from the last rowain Singapore. Another great opportunity for Kimi Antonelli to further stretch on his teammate. Sprint Race and Grand Prix will distribute 33 points (8 plus 25) and Kimi could still take advantage of his teammate’s difficulties. But even the World Championship leader has some concerns: “I didn’t choose to go with the new configuration – he admitted – it was the team that decided in this direction, but I’m confident, because I think the package works and that Sepang was a rather isolated case. It’s just a matter of trying to put the car in the right range. It will be a good opportunity to see and compare the two packages. The team has put in an extraordinary amount of work to bring these updates to the track and it would be a shame to abandon them so soon. We need to understand what didn’t work and help the team go in the right direction.”
No to the cooling vest
Kimi analyzes the situation in view of Singapore: “A weekend with a Sprint format on a city is already very challenging in itself, and then we already know that the sessions will all be very different from each other. Free practice will be during the day, while qualifying will be at night, so the data we will collect anyway will clash with very different experiences on the track. But it will be a good challenge for us drivers and for the team.” And he has no doubts about it cooling vest: he won’t wear it. “Last year I used it twice and they both went badly – he said – the first time it didn’t work and the second time the internal pump broke and in Austin for the entire course of a session the system pumped water at 50 degrees instead of cooling me. I had a real heatstroke and since then I told myself: ‘You know what? I’ll train hard so I won’t have to use it on weekends anymore.’ I think if the system was perfected, if we got to a point where it was so advanced that we were confident that it would work every time and for as long as it needed to, that would be really great because it would definitely keep you cool. But now there is so much uncertainty that I prefer to just rely on myself.”
Ferrari hopes so
And at Ferrari? The latest results do not lead to optimism, it is better not to delude yourself as you do Charles Leclerc: “It will be really hard, not only for us drivers, but also for the whole team. We will have to try to do everything as best we can: stay in the right tire window, make the right decisions when necessary… but it will be a good exercise for everyone, especially on a track like this which I particularly like, and it’s really one of my favorites of the whole season. We are often fast on Fridays because we work on different engine configurations than our rivals. But certainly the fact of being well balanced straight away is one of our strong points which could help us a little in view of the qualification and the sprint race. Obviously it remains to be seen whether it will be enough to win.” Then there is the risk of rain, Lewis Hamilton he sees it like this: “Here every year the forecast says rain every single day. So it doesn’t really mean anything, because it could just be humidity, and usually we expect rain and then in the end it almost never rains. However, if it rains in these parts it will certainly be intense and with a Sprint format weekend this could obviously complicate the sessions. I doubt any of the drivers managed to get back to the factory between Malaysia and Singapore to test on the simulator, so we’re all in the same boat. It will be intense, having the Sprint here for the first time, and I think quite exciting.”
