Chaos and crashes unfold in Singapore GP practice shocker

The second practice session for the Singapore Grand Prix turned into chaos following two smashes for George Russell and Liam Lawson, and a pit-lane crash involving Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc.

The session was less than 20 minutes old when Russell sparked a red flag, ploughing nose-first into a TecPro barrier at Turn 16.

Russell was left surprised by the reaction of his car under braking as he attempted to turn right, only to straight-line off the track, breaking the front wing, leaving it deposited onto the track. His radio message was a simple one: "That was weird."

With the barriers requiring repairs, there was an 11-minute delay before the action resumed but only for five minutes before Liam Lawson brought out the red flags for a second time.

Exiting out of the penultimate corner and on the run down to the final turn, Lawson hit a wall hard with the right-hand side of his Racing Bulls, initially with the rear before the front followed on impact, dislodging the right-front wheel.

Lawson tried to make it back to the pits given his proximity, but was naturally forced to stop in the lane itself, sparking an initial closure and preventing numerous cars from returning before it was deemed safe enough for it to re-open.

After another 11-minute break, and with the remaining cars itching to make up for lost time, Ferrari's Leclerc was unsafely released into the path of Norris in his McLaren, sending it into the pit-lane wall, breaking the front wing. Ferrari is under investigation.

At the end of all the mayhem, championship-leader Oscar Piastri finished quickest with a lap of 1:30.714s in his McLaren, followed by Isack Hadjar for Racing Bulls and Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

Verstappen in the mix

The second session naturally afforded more representative conditions, with the circuit lit by thousands of lights. Although there was little change compared to the daytime temperature, the track temperature was lower by several degrees, and the humidity was higher at 80%.

Track evolution was also incredibly high as the times from all involved were lowered lap by lap on the medium tyres, with Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso the anomaly on the hards, leaving him fourth on the timesheet when the session was red-flagged after 18 minutes for Russell's crash.

At that stage, Piastri and Norris were split by just seven-thousandths of a second at the top of the timesheet, with the Australian having the edge, albeit with his lap of 1:31.716s still six-tenths behind Alonso's leading lap from FP1.

Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton was lying third, just over a tenth of a second adrift, with Alonso fourth, just over half a second back. 

In the five minutes of track action before Lawson's crash, Esteban Ocon in his Haas nabbed top spot on the soft tyres with a lap of 1:34.480s, with Hamilton 0.011s back after a fresh medium-tyre outing.

With just 13 minutes of action remaining after that incident, and once the pit lane was clear following the Leclerc-Norris skirmish, there was a mad scramble to post lap times.

With Piastri having the edge at the conclusion, there were still mistakes being made, such as those from Norris and Hamilton, the latter brushing a wall on his first soft-tyre run, and backing out of his second after setting personal bests in the first two sectors.

Behind the leading trio, Alonso maintained his form to finish fourth quickest, 0.163s adrift, with an unhappy Norris almost half a second back in fifth.

Lance Stroll finished a third of a second behind Alonso in sixth, with the Canadian followed by Ocon, Williams' Carlos Sainz, Leclerc and Hamilton, with Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda 11th, just under a second down.