Ricciardo leads Red Bull 1-2 in first practice

At a Hypersoft tire qualifying simulation over the last half hour, Ricciardo beat Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari in 1m39.711.

Max Verstappen made a Red Bull 1-2, and his teammate Kimi Raikkonen finished the session seven-tenths of fourth after losing track time for a car problem.

Nico Hulkenberg, trying out a new houseboat on his Renault this weekend, was the best of the rest in fifth place, though 1,394 on the pace, while none of Mercedes' drivers were able to get the pace. tried a quick turn on the ground of hypersoft.

Lewis Hamilton was sixth fastest, Valtteri Bottas eighth.

At the beginning of the session, the Marina Bay circuit was still under the afternoon sun and at an ambient temperature of 32 ° C. The surface of the track itself was a 43C to cook.

Given the relatively unrepresentative nature of this day session, several teams showed little urgency to get to the track and only eight drivers completed timed laps in the first 15 minutes.

The surface of the track changed significantly during the session and the process accelerated with the resumption of the race: Raikkonen 1M44.622 was more than two seconds faster than Ricciardo's best lap of the first half of the year. last year. In its last hour, Mercedes and the two Red Bulls broke the 2017 time without using the most flexible tires available.

Much of this improvement will be due to the development of cars and tires, as teams rarely compete in a race weekend on a green runway.

Raikkonen and Verstappen both drove new elements of the MGU-H, their third of the season, but Raikkonen only ran eight laps before a technical problem forced him to face what the team had told him was "a long change".

Vettel also spent a good part of the first hour in the garage, completing only 10 laps before Raikkonen and he returned to the track with 35 minutes to go.

Vettel climbed to the top of the standings with a time of 1m39.997s, eclipsing Bottas' previous record (1m41.669s) on the softs, while Raikkonen made a brief stop at turn 18, taking the road from the escape.

Ricciardo and Verstappen then appeared to perform qualifying simulations on the hypersofts, and both went faster than Vettel, with respectively 1m39.711 and 1m39.912.

All the while, the Mercedes association has followed its own program of long races on the soft track, although they make the tour clearly: Bottas makes a brief excursion to turn 14 on the road of the escape.

Carlos Sainz managed to slip between the two Mercedes in his qualifying heats, and Charles Leclerc was Sauber's ninth fastest.

Romain Grosjean completed the top 10, three places and a little more than three tenths less than his teammate Kevin Magnussen Haas.