️ Sprint race updates from 10am BST; qualifying 2pm BST
️ Wolff tells critics to ‘watch Teletubbies not F1’ | Mail Philip
“F1 looks amateurish and incompetent after farcical scenes in Sepang” was the headline on Giles Richards’ Bahrain-in-Malaysia verdict, after the rain and the rules combined to leave the world’s fastest drivers calling the Kuala Lumpur AA for help. Surely, things could only get better for the FIA.
And then came sprint qualifying in Singapore, and human error:
After the first sprint qualifying session was red-flagged when Cadillac’s Sergio Perez crashed into a barrier, race control staff belatedly reactivated “overtake mode” for 27 seconds before switching it off for the rest of the session.
Overtake mode gives drivers extra power and toggling it on helped drivers who were setting a lap time at the end of the session. Reuters
“Half of the cars did the lap with half a second quicker engine than the others. There was another software issue with the cars this time around and we were on the bad end of it,” Sainz said.
“For whatever reason, the FIA, like in Malaysia, didn’t decide to do sporting equity and were happy to do half of the cars in quali with higher power than the other half of the cars. So a bit confused why the sport keeps doing different things depending on who is out in Q1 or who is out in lap one.” Reuters
