Max Verstappen beat George Russell by just under a tenth and a quarter to secure sprint pole for the Singapore Grand Prix. The Dutchman improved by a second and a half from his best time in SQ2, setting a 31.156 to secure his first pole of the season.<\/p>\n
Following his Sepang victory, Verstappen\u2019s pole provides further signs of progress by Red Bull and Ford. \u00a0The pole sitter was cleared of wrongdoing after overtaking Lewis Hamilton under yellow flags when Sergio Perez went off and eventually caused a red flag.<\/p>\n
Perez went straight into the Turn Five barrier and broke his front wing, with the incident later triggering a red flag during the opening session of sprint qualifying. The Mexican damaged his front wing and eventually lost it on the racing line, with the red flag waved to clear the debris.<\/p>\n
The stewards believe Verstappen to have sufficiently slowed down for the yellow flag by fully lifting off the throttle; they have deemed the speed differential between the Red Bull and the Ferrari to have been too substantial for the Dutchman to brake safely.<\/p>\n
But that didn\u2019t stop Verstappen from securing sprint pole and topping a qualifying session in any format at Marina Bay for the first time, on his only attempt in SQ3. Russell put his Mercedes six hundredths faster than Charles Leclerc, with the Ferrari driver almost half a tenth ahead of the McLaren\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Ferrari had looked to be the team to beat, showing strong pace under the lights, and Leclerc did hold provisional pole before the track ramped up, allowing both Russell and Verstappen to improve on their final attempts. Lewis Hamilton also struggled to unlock the promise shown earlier in sprint qualifying.<\/p>\n
Verstappen said, \u201cSo, it is always close in Singapore, and also, your lap itself, you’re pushing as hard as you think is possible to the walls and places,” says the Red Bull driver. But once we bolted on the soft tyre, it felt like the car was coming alive a little bit more – but I did not expect this. Very happy to be first.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamilton added, \u201cWe did a slightly different run plan to the others. It was my choice, but I think we got that wrong. But ultimately, the car was very oversteery on that lap. If the rears [tyres] are not ready or they are overheating, it’s difficult to say. But it’s was very snappy and oversteery in the lap overall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oscar Piastri was comfortably ahead of teammate Lando Norris as they split the Ferraris, with Norris putting himself over a tenth faster than Hamilton. \u00a0Championship leader Kimi Antonelli, using the Mercedes upgrade that underperformed in Malaysia while Russell is on the previous specification, could manage only seventh, a tenth and a half behind the Ferrari.<\/p>\n
Antonelli explained that the team\u2019s upgrade has made \u201cthe car very difficult and very unpredictable.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the FIA are facing more questions about software bugs, after SQ2 was delayed because of a glitch with the timing system. However, it did involve the settings being different before and after a red flag caused by a crash for Sergio Perez’s Cadillac and left drivers complaining of reduced power.<\/p>\n
It involved overtake mode, which allows an extra 0.5MJ of energy to be harvested, being switched on and off again in the space of 28 seconds.\u00a0 The FIA also revealed there had been an unrelated incident due to “human error in Race Control” regarding the activation of Overtake Mode after the debris-triggered red flag in SQ1, meaning some cars benefitted from boost mode and others did not for a portion of the final laps of the opening session.<\/p>\n
Liam Lawson was eighth, ahead of Isack Hadjar and Pierre Gasly completing the top ten, but both Frenchmen had their two attempts deleted in SQ3 for track limits. Franco Colapinto was fastest of those knocked out in SQ2, the Argentine missing out by eight hundredths.<\/p>\n
Colapinto seven hundredths ahead of Nico Hulkenberg, with the Haas of Ollie Bearman splitting the Audi\u2019s. Bearman was three thousandths behind the German as put himself four hundredths faster than Gabriel Bortoletto. Another decent qualifying in the context of Aston Martin\u2019s season saw Fernando Alonso fifteenth, over half a second ahead of Esteban Ocon.<\/p>\n
Arvid Lindblad went into this weekend with caution after crashing at other street circuits, perhaps too cautiously as he missed out by just under a tenth on progressing into SQ2, amidst the confusion with the timing system. That left the second Racing Bull over half a second ahead of Lance Stroll, a big surprise given the way the English-Swede has performed in his rookie season.<\/p>\n
Alex Albon put his Williams over six tenths ahead of the Cadillacs; Perez a tenth faster than teammate Valtteri Bottas following his contact with the wall that caused a red flag; Carlos Sainz completed the field half a second further behind.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard complained that he \u201chad a lot of front locking and no rear.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Max Verstappen beat George Russell by just under a tenth and a quarter to secure sprint pole for the Singapore Grand Prix. The Dutchman improved by a second and a half from his best time in SQ2, setting a 31.156 to secure his first pole of the season. Following his Sepang victory, Verstappen\u2019s pole provides<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2339,390,565,709,814,1235,1236,1283,1298,1637,2344,1642,1835,1836,1837,1882,2225],"class_list":["post-16550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-session-reports","tag-2339","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-downtown-core-and-kallang","tag-ferrari","tag-george-russell","tag-marina-bay","tag-marina-bay-street-circuit","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mercedes","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-ford","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-singapore","tag-singapore-gp","tag-singapore-grand-prix","tag-sprint-qualifying","tag-sprint-qualifying-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16550"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16556,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16550\/revisions\/16556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}