They nevertheless ended up second and fourth behind Sainz, splitting Mercedes pair George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, who had topped the day’s earlier FP1 session at the Marina Bay track.
At the start of the only comparably practice session for qualifying and the race given it’s night-time start, Valtteri Bottas was the first driver out of the pits as the early runners toured around on the medium and hard tyres.
Bottas established the first place benchmark at 1m45.839s on the mediums, before he was shuffled back by Mercedes pair Russell and then Hamilton, who completed his first flier at 1m44.091s.
Russell remained at the top of the times until the end of the opening 10 minutes, the Briton’s opening run including an off-track moment the Turn 11 fast right than leads onto the Anderson bridge at the bottom end of the circuit.
He managed to get his Mercedes stopped, but only just before the barrier before reversing and continuing on his way.
Sainz then took over at the head of the times with a 1m43.710s – also on the medium tyres being run by the two Mercedes drivers – before Hamilton edged back ahead with a 1m43.668s a few minutes later.
At the end of the one-hour session’s first third, Sainz moved back to the top of the times with a 1m43.237s that stood as the definitive medium tyre time for the next phase.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1-75
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
By this point, it was clear the championship leaders were having an unusual session, with Verstappen and his team-mate Sergio Perez, and Leclerc, yet to set a time.
Red Bull was working on both of its cars in its garage, while Ferrari reattached Leclerc’s floor, which meant they ran out of sync with the rest of the pack when they did emerge.
Perez was the first of the trio to do so – immediately heading out to conduct qualifying simulation run on the softs, which Bottas had just used at this point before the halfway mark to jump up the order to sit second behind Sainz’s best on the mediums.
On it from the off on his flier, Perez had a massive slide exiting the Turn 5 long right that feeds onto the track’s first long straight and he lost further time in the final two sectors to end up nearly 1.5s behind the leading time on the harder rubber.
A few minutes later, Sainz completed Ferrari’s first soft-shod run – improving his first place benchmark to 1m42.751s.
This came despite the Spaniard clipping the wall exiting the Turn 19 90-degree…
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