2024 F1 Round 18, Singapore Grand Prix FP3: Norris breaks Marina Bay lap record with 1:29.646; large lizard strays onto track and triggers red flag

In the early evening of September 21, China Standard Time (UTC+8), the third practice session for the 2024 F1 Singapore Grand Prix took place ahead of qualifying. Lando Norris led in dominant fashion, breaking the Marina Bay lap record with a 1:29.646, while George Russell was second, 0.479 seconds behind; Yuki Tsunoda slipped to 11th after finishing in the top five in the first two sessions.

Less than 10 minutes into the session, a large lizard wandered onto the track, prompting race control to bring out the red flag so it could be ushered away—another twist in a chaotic Saturday afternoon. There was cloud cover that day, and both the air and track temperatures were lower than usual, but conditions were still very different from those for night-time qualifying.

Norris switched to soft tyres late in the session and promptly broke the track’s fastest-lap record; team-mate Oscar Piastri was 0.8 seconds slower in third. Mercedes bounced back strongly after struggling the day before: Russell rose to second, while Lewis Hamilton also climbed to seventh, having bluntly said beforehand, “Even getting into Q3 will be tough.” Ferrari, by contrast, had been the favourites going in but lost their way overnight—Charles Leclerc was only fifth, 0.913 seconds off the pace, and even lamented over the radio after switching to soft tyres, “It feels terrible, it’s really too slow”; Carlos Sainz followed in sixth.

Red Bull’s handling problems had eased somewhat, and Max Verstappen moved up to fourth, but he was still 0.894 seconds behind Norris; Sergio Perez, who had outpaced his team-mate on Friday, slumped to 15th. RB, whose two cars had both made the top seven on Friday, faced a fightback from the midfield pack: Tsunoda was leapfrogged in succession by both Williams drivers and Fernando Alonso, dropping to 11th, just 0.165 seconds behind eighth-placed Alex Albon; Daniel Ricciardo was 17th, a further 0.447 seconds behind Tsunoda.

Only 0.3 seconds separated Tsunoda from 15th-placed Perez, making the battle for Q3 places fiercer than ever, with the midfield qualifying order almost impossible to predict. Qualifying will take place at 21:00 China Standard Time (UTC+8) that evening.