Fernando Alonso ends two-year F1 practice wait as Alex Albon suffers brake fire blow

Fernando Alonso sprang a surprise in Singapore by setting the leading time in a first practice session that lasted just six minutes for Alex Albon in his Williams.

Albon incurred a rear-brake fire due to what the team described as a "hardware issue", sparking a natural investigation and ruling out the Thai-British driver for the remainder of the run.

Initially, clouds of smoke plumed from the back of the car as Albon returned to his pit box. The incident was dealt with swiftly, but the team's idea to start wheeling Albon into his garage was not a clever one, as the acrid smoke still pervaded.

It forced the team to roll the car back out, with Albon in clear discomfort as he tried to waft the smoke away from his open visor.

Albon could then do nothing more than watch on as the remainder of the session unfolded, culminating in Alonso being quickest, topping his first practice session in over two years. The last time he did so was second practice in Canada in 2024.

The Aston Martin driver posted a best lap of 1:31.116s, beating Ferrari's Charles Leclerc by 0.150s, followed by Max Verstappen in his Red Bull, a further 0.126s down.

In wholly unrepresentative conditions, with FP1 run in the afternoon, compared to qualifying and the race in the evening, the initial 60 minutes were more of a data gathering exercise for the drivers and teams.

On a mix of hard and medium tyres early on, the lap times tumbled as the track rubbered in in the dry conditions, either side the Albon brake fire.

After 20 minutes, McLaren's Lando Norris marginally held a narrow edge of just 0.021s over Verstappen with a lap of 1:32.493s, with Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso also in close attendance, 0.099s adrift of the British driver.

Alonso managed to find another four-tenths on Norris' time with the medium compound, until Carlos Sainz, to offer Williams some hope after Albon's incident, went a quarter of a second faster on the yellow-striped rubber with a 1:31.812s.

With just over 20 minutes remaining, the soft tyres made an appearance. Leclerc was the first out and immediately scorched to the top of the timesheet by over half a second on Sainz.

Norris responded by purpling the first sector but lost time over the remainder of the lap to finish 0.432s down. With a purple middle sector, Verstappen then slotted into second with a lap 0.126s behind Leclerc.

Championship leader Oscar Piastri popped into third before complaining of a slow Hamilton, leading to a deadpan clip over the radio as he said: "Ferrari will invent mirrors one day, I hope." 

With 11 minutes remaining, Alonso surprisingly popped into the lead, beating Leclerc by 0.149s, with the two-time F1 champion undoubtedly aided by track evolution.

That was underlined by the veteran Spanish driver purpling the first sector, albeit en route to a lap that only ended up being one-thousandth of a second faster. It proved to be the best overall, however.

Behind third-placed Verstappen was Hamilton, 0.364s adrift, followed by Piastri, Norris, and Racing Bulls' Isack Hadjar, with the top eight all on softs.

Sainz was eighth quickest on mediums, with another soft-tyre runner in Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda ninth, 0.744s off the pace. Esteban Ocon in his Haas rounded out the top 10, a second down.

The slowest on track was Alpine's Franco Colapinto, 2.208s down in his Alpine. Ahead of the Argentinian, and in starck contrast to Alonso, was the veteran's team-mate Lance Stroll, 1.918s back.