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| Reuters |
Canadian Formula One driver Lance Stroll will miss Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix after his heavy crash in qualifying, his Aston Martin team said.
Stroll was able to climb unaided from his car on Saturday but Aston said in a statement that he was still sore and the team also faced a huge job repairing the car in time for the night race.
"The whole team are relieved that Lance was able to step out of the car after yesterday's accident," said team principal Mike Krack.
Formula 1’s lap record at Singapore’s Marina Bay circuit, a 1m36.015s set by Lewis Hamilton using the increasingly-distant-memory purple-walled hypersoft tyre in qualifying for the 2018 race, will be obliterated this weekend.
It is a virtual certainty that – weather permitting – it will be surpassed already in first practice, perhaps by whoever posts the first actual flying lap.
And that, of course, is not because F1 cars are magically so much faster now than they had been five years ago – but because the Singapore track, more specifically one section (perhaps its most visually-familiar one), will look nothing like it has done in its previous 13 years on the F1 calendar.
Turns 16, 17, 18 and 19 of the new layout – all sharp, slow-speed corners, with 18-19 making up the instantly-recognisable ‘tunnel’ section – will not feature this year. Instead, the final four corners of the track will make up Turns 16-19, having previously been Turns 20-23.
So, a four-corner section going right-left-left-right will be ‘streamlined’, the track continuing to go down Raffles Avenue for a straight of around 400 metres.
