Academy Report: Lia soars in Singapore

The tight and twisty Marina Bay Street Circuit is known to challenge every driver that races there, and Lia Block rose to that challenge on her first visit to Singapore.

Our Williams Racing Driver Academy representative in F1 Academy brought home her two best finishes of her rookie season to show her growth.

With Lia joining Alex and Franco twice in the closing six races, her speed is shining through at the perfect time. Here's how she fared in Singapore.

Two P4 qualifying results meant Lia would be up there on the second row against far more seasoned and experienced racers at the start of the weekend's two races.

Lia got her elbows out at the start of Race 1 to retain P4 off the line despite attacks from Chloe Chambers and Hamda Al Qubaisi on her inside and outside, respectively.

While the three leading drivers have all had years of circuit racing to help them also hold the top spots of the championship, our rookie Lia didn't look out of place being amongst them.

She stayed with the trio for the first half of the race, keeping well ahead of Chambers in P5, and brought the car home in a comfortable P4 finish.

Even though that was result was Lia's best of the season, she narrowly missed out on a podium trip after Doriane Pin received a five-second penalty, but finished 5.2s ahead by the chequered flag.

Nonetheless, Lia showed that this was not a one-off result by securing back-to-back P4 finishes with Race 2 on Sunday seeing the same finish.

This time Lia had to retain her place twice with a Safety Car restart attack from Nerea Marti needing more robust defensive driving.

The result means Lia tripled her 2024 points tally by taking 24 home from Singapore to go with her existing 12, launching her up the standings to P8.

F1 Academy will be back in action for the final two rounds of the 2024 season at Qatar and Abu Dhabi.