Fernando Alonso beat the Ferraris, McLarens and Max Verstappen’s Red Bull to set the pace for Aston Martin in first practice for F1’s 2025 Singapore Grand Prix, as Alex Albon’s Williams suffered a rear brake fire.
Aston Martin ran a different tyre strategy to the rest of the field, putting Alonso and Lance Stroll on the medium (C4) compound for the initial running, as the others did their early confidence-building on the hard (C3).
All save for Albon, who returned quickly to the pits with a rear brake fire that Williams struggled to extinguish.
It looks like the Williams of Alex Albon has got a little too hot at the start of this FP1 session 😳#F1 #SingaporeGP pic.twitter.com/FkaQ5zz24X
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 3, 2025
“Alex has experienced a rear brake hardware problem which we are investigating,” the team reported, saying he would miss the remainder of FP1 but the car should be fixed for FP2.
Verstappen, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and the not-on-fire Williams of Carlos Sainz all took turns to head the times in those early stages of FP1, before Alonso hit the front with a 1m32.054s lap to put Aston Martin four tenths clear.
Sainz briefly went quicker on his own set of mediums before the soft-tyred laps began in earnest.
Charles Leclerc showed an impressive turn of speed for Ferrari in this phase of the session, going fastest on a 1m32.266s lap that everyone bar Alonso struggled to beat.
Verstappen was initially half a second adrift, Norris four tenths off and Piastri a full second adrift, complaining of understeer in his McLaren that required a front wing adjustment in the pits that didn’t fully eradicate the problem.
Piastri eventually worked down to a time 0.215s off Leclerc, but that was only good enough for fifth as Verstappen’s Red Bull and Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari slotted into the gap between them.
But all paled in comparison to Alonso, who set two laps good enough for first place, setting a 1m31.117s and then shaving a thousandth of second from that.
This put the leading Aston Martin 0.150s clear of Leclerc's Ferrari, with Norris rounding out the top six in the second McLaren, 0.582s off the pace.
Rookie Isack Hadjar was the last of the soft-tyred runners to displace the medium-compound lap of Sainz’s Williams to go seventh-quickest, while Yuki Tsunoda’s Red Bull - not yet running the latest Red Bull front wing present on Verstappen’s car - was the last driver to lap within a second of the pace in ninth.
Esteban Ocon’s Haas rounded out the top 10, as neither Mercedes managed to crack the top 10 during a session in which neither George Russell nor Kimi Antonelli ran the soft tyre.
Mercedes is also trialling a new front wing profile here, designed to better balance the car at low-speed.
Stroll was only 18th (out of 20 runners) in the second Aston Martin, almost two seconds off Alonso’s pace.
Session results
1 Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) 1m31.116s
2 Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.150s
3 Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.276s
4 Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +0.364s
5 Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +0.365s
6 Lando Norris (McLaren) +0.582s
7 Isack Hadjar (Racing Bulls) +0.639s
8 Carlos Sainz (Williams) +0.696s
9 Yuki Tsunoda (Red Bull) +0.744s
10 Esteban Ocon (Haas) +1.012s
11 George Russell (Mercedes) +1.023s
12 Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber) +1.199s
13 Pierre Gasly (Alpine) +1.262s
14 Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +1.283s
15 Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls) +1.345s
16 Ollie Bearman (Haas) +1.422s
17 Gabriel Bortoleto (Sauber) +1.495s
18 Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) +1.918s
19 Franco Colapinto (Alpine) +2.208s
20 Alex Albon (Williams) no time
