Norris pips Leclerc by 0.058s in second practice

Lando Norris was fastest in the second Formula 1 practice session at the Singapore Grand Prix, maintaining a tight battle with Charles Leclerc at the top of the timing boards.

Norris led the way with a 1m30.727s time as the two were separated by just 0.058 seconds, and with over half-a-second’s gap over the rest of the field at the end of the session.

Amid the early runs on medium and hard tyres, as the drivers sought to get a picture of the track evolution in night-time conditions, the times swiftly ran through the gamut of laps set amid the 1m32s – Charles Leclerc bringing the field below the 1m33s bracket on the medium tyre.

He and Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz continued to set the pace, trading fastest times, before Alex Albon beat them both – also on the medium – with a 1m32.238s effort.

Leclerc concluded the medium efforts at full speed with a 1m31.665s lap, which Albon found time on during his first effort on softs – a 1m31.650s.

Although Albon set the early pace, the slenderness of his margin over the Ferraris on mediums suggested there was more in it; this was duly proved correct when George Russell overcame his engine’s limp mode setting and logged a 1m31.488s on his first effort on the softs.

Oscar Piastri swiftly beat this by 0.014s, noting that he perhaps needed more downforce in the car, but Norris pumped in the first time under the 1m31s mark of the weekend on his opening effort on the red-walled tyre, to set a convincing benchmark.

Leclerc got close, shadowing Norris by 0.058s with a slender margin between them, as Sainz was a further six-tenths behind in third.

Attention then shifted to the longer runs, starting with the soft tyres, as the drivers and engineers sought to use the only hour of representative practice running preparing for Sunday’s race.

This yielded no further shuffling in times, ending with the same drivers occupying the top three positions as in FP1. Norris nonetheless had a couple of moments throughout the rest of practice, as he reported he “hit the wall pretty hard” amid the longer runs and later locked up at Turn 7.

Russell then went into the wall at Turn 8 in the final two minutes of the session, wedging his front wing under the barrier. The Mercedes driver managed to back his car out to avoid bringing out a red flag, with minimal apparent damage beyond his nosecone.

Yuki Tsunoda made his way into the top four, just over a tenth behind Sainz as the RBs continued to appear within the…