Max Verstappen secured back-to-back poles, beating Charles Leclerc by just over half a tenth to take Grand Prix pole for the Singapore Grand Prix. The Dutchman left it late and failed to improve in the final moments of Q3 as the track appeared to fall away as the temperatures cooled down during qualifying.<\/p>\n
Verstappen has looked on great form all weekend, topping every competitive session. The four-time champion has been the man to beat all weekend, and took pole for the Grand Prix a few hours after winning the sprint, following George Russell, crashing out of the lead.<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton put his Ferrari third, having struggled with the handling of his car; he was left almost eight hundredths behind his teammate Leclerc. Hamilton looked to be Verstappen\u2019s closest rival, but couldn\u2019t replicate the same improvement on his final runs in Q3, as most struggled to improve.<\/p>\n
Hamilton had provisional pole, but when on his final attempt he couldn\u2019t find a further improvement and was then beaten by Verstappen and then Leclerc; the second Ferrari had looked until that point to have the chance of fighting for pole. That denied him a first Grand Prix pole in three years.<\/p>\n
Hamilton said he had adjusted brake balance for the final part of qualifying and he thought it had “just tipped it a little over the edge”.<\/p>\n
Verstappen said, \u201cVery happy to be on pole because this is the one that I wanted. We have been on a positive trend, so for us it’s very special to take a pole here.”<\/p>\n
Hamilton, who was on track to get his first pole in three years, said: “Another difficult Q3, the car was feeling so much better. I felt like she had more in her. Finding that sweet spot is very, very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
“It is a really good result for us, we can hopefully work as a team tomorrow to hold on to Max and put them [Red Bull] under pressure. Who knows, we will see if we can get ahead of him.”<\/p>\n
Kimi Antonelli and Lando Norris both did improve; the Mercedes driver fourth a tenth and a half faster than the Englishman as they both improved. Norris put himself nearly four hundredths faster than Russell, but a grid penalty for a new power unit drops Russell to the back. That means Norris will start alongside his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri.<\/p>\n
Both McLaren\u2019s bouncing back from their collision earlier on Saturday evening to round out the top four teams. Isack Hadjar was the only one from the top four teams not to take part in qualifying; he failed to set a time in Q1 after a gearbox issue, meaning he will join Russell at the back of the grid.<\/p>\n
Saturday evening was one to forget for the Frenchman after retiring from the sprint and then the reliability woes left him unable to set a representative time in qualifying. \u201cSame issue, I lost the gears,\u201d he said as he returned to the pitlane and never emerged back out.<\/p>\n
Pierre Gasly put his Alpine eighth as he went over a tenth ahead of the Racing Bulls, with Liam Lawson out-qualifying his teammate Arvid Lindblad by four tenths as they completed the top ten. Gasly improved significantly to get out of the drop zone at the end of Q2, going eighth, before the Racing Bulls shuffled him back down to tenth.<\/p>\n
Nico Hulkenberg was fastest of those knocked out in Q2, the Audi driver missing out by a tenth and three-quarters. The German was two hundredths faster than the Haas\u2019 with Ollie Bearman going over four tenths faster than teammate Esteban Ocon.<\/p>\n
Gabriel Bortoleto was over a tenth faster than Franco Colapinto, the Argentine aborting his final attempt after clipping the wall that resulted in him being a second off his teammate\u2019s best in Q2.<\/p>\n
Fernando Alonso was fastest of the drivers knocked out in Q1, the two -time champion six hundredths behind Bortoletto at the end of that part of qualifying. Alonso was nearly seven hundredths faster than Alex Albon, with teammate Lance Stroll seven tenths further behind.<\/p>\n
The two Cadillacs completed the field, Sergio Perez nearly eight tenths faster than Valtteri Bottas.<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen secured back-to-back poles, beating Charles Leclerc by just over half a tenth to take Grand Prix pole for the Singapore Grand Prix. The Dutchman left it late and failed to improve in the final moments of Q3 as the track appeared to fall away as the temperatures cooled down during qualifying. Verstappen has<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2339,390,565,1235,1236,1283,1597,1598,1637,2344,1642,1835,1836,1837,1843],"class_list":["post-16566","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-marina-bay","tag-marina-bay-street-circuit","tag-max-verstappen","tag-qualifying","tag-qualifying-report","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-ford","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-singapore","tag-singapore-gp","tag-singapore-grand-prix","tag-lewis-hamilton"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16566","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=16566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16567,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16566\/revisions\/16567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}