Pierre Gasly had a moment in the Alpine where the Frenchman narrowly avoided contact with the wall. “Wow, that was close,” Gasly said over the radio. Alex Albon, meanwhile, was not quite so lucky. Replays show the Williams brushing the barriers before returning to the garage while the team assessed whether any damage had been done.

Leclerc moved to the top of the timesheets halfway through the session, setting a lap of 1m31.525s, a tenth of a second ahead of Verstappen. Elsewhere, there was more drama as Russell went straight at Turn 14.

WATCH: Join Norris on board for Friday’s fastest lap in Singapore

The order began to change as many focused on their soft tyre runs. Russell was fastest while Piastri slid badly during his lap after the McLaren hit too many kerbs. Norris had no such problems and finished P1 with an impressive 1m29.646s, almost half a second faster than Russell.

All eyes were then on what Ferrari could achieve and the answer soon came: Carlos Sainz was 1.161s behind Norris in sixth, while Leclerc aborted his first flying run before setting the fifth fastest time, 0.913s behind the Briton.