Nico's Singapore Blog - Thursday

Posted on Friday 25 Sep 2009 and tagged with rosberg, blog, singapore.

Singapore is one of the best races on the Formula One calendar and it’s great to be back in the city again. There’s a great vibe here because the locals throw their weight behind the race and I enjoy staying on European time because it means I can stay up all night and not get a whipping from Frank!

I did my usual Thursday track walk with Tony Ross, my engineer, this evening. There have been some subtle changes to the circuit since last year, which should make the racing better. It’s been resurfaced in several places and some of the apexes have been tightened, which could improve overtaking because we’ll have to slow the cars even more on the approach to those corners.

Much of the talk in the paddock today was about what happened at this race last year, when Nelson Piquet crashed deliberately in the early stages of the race. I don’t want to comment on the penalty handed out to Renault by the World Motorsport Council, but what I will say is that it’s wrong to lampoon F1 for what happened. There are cheats in every walk of life and F1 is no different. All the FIA can do is get the culprits out of the way as and when they hear about them, and that’s what they’ve done on this occasion.

I’m convinced that the incident will soon be forgotten because that’s the nature of our sport. F1 is about tomorrow, not yesterday, and we have some great on-track action to look forward to this weekend.

The FW31 should be much more competitive this weekend than it was at Monza because all of our aerodynamic development this year has been in high downforce trim. The car handled well at the European Grand Prix, where I finished fifth, and the demands of the Marina Bay circuit are similar to Valencia so I hope to be battling in that area of the field on Sunday night.