Aston Martin's Alonso Leads First Practice at Singapore Grand Prix

F1 Singapore

3-5 October will see the race beginning at 1pm BST on Sunday.

Real-time updates provided on radio channels and BBC Sport.

FP1 Results Overview

Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso set the pace in front of Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and reigning champion during first practice for the Singapore Grand Prix.

The British team's championship contenders Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris concluded the run in fifth and sixth.

The young Australian was 0.217 seconds speedier than his teammate.

Alonso was a tenth and a half in front of the Ferrari driver and 0.276secs clear than Verstappen.

Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton was just outside the top three.

Weekend Outlook

Unlikely that the Silverstone-based team will be front-runners for pole position.

Nonetheless, the outfit are confident of a improved performance on a technical venue that is more suited to their vehicle, which excels when plenty of aerodynamic grip are required.

Veteran racer Alonso is also famous as a Marina Bay expert, and often shines on the Marina Bay street track.

Yet he was almost certainly operating with reduced weight or a higher engine mode than his opponents, or both, to achieve that pace.

Practice Conditions

His team-mate Canadian racer was a significant margin off the pace in the lower order.

The Canadian had difficulties with his cockpit early in the session and was also evaluating experimental parts.

FP1 in Marina Bay is not representative of later performance under lights as it is held in daylight in the daytime, while qualifying and the main event are held under floodlights.

Title Battle

Piastri is ahead of Norris by a solid margin with seven races left heading into the Grand Prix in Singapore.

McLaren are poised to clinch the manufacturers' crown on Sunday.

Single possibility they can miss out in this race is if the Silver Arrows surpass them by 31 points or the Scuderia do so by 35.

Red Bull Update

Red Bull are hopeful of a good performance after Verstappen's victories in Monza and Baku preceding this event.

The team breathed a sigh when light rain coming down ahead of FP1 cleared by the time the cars emerged on a surface that had stayed clear.

Senior figure Helmut Marko stated prior to running that they needed a dry hour to get underway on optimizing their chassis settings for the event.