Lewis Hamilton put on a fearless face after his world championship bid suffered a setback Friday at the Singapore Grand Prix.
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Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg, who is just two points behind Hamilton in the title race, was fastest, ramping up the pressure on the English triple world champion.
Verstappen’s fastest lap of one minute and 45.823 seconds was marginally quicker than that of his team-mate Daniel Ricciardo.
Hamilton had two sessions to forget as he could only come fourth in the first 90 minutes of running and seventh in the second, before having to pit early with a hydraulic problem.
“They have fixed the valve and it is changed now, so it should be no problem tomorrow”, an upbeat Hamilton said.
But Hamilton said he felt they had closed the gap on the slower street circuit which negates Mercedes power and aerodynamic dominance.
Kimi Raikkonen repeatedly dodged requests to compare the potential of Ferrari competing with Red Bull and Mercedes ahead of this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, but admitted that he was happy with his opening day after posting the second fastest time in late-night practice.
“Ferrari were mighty around this circuit past year and it will suit the high downforce design philosophy followed by Red Bull, so we must not make the mistake of thinking we are favourites this weekend”. We still have a little bit to go, I think we can improve from where we are. The German badly misjudged the tricky left-hand turn 18 and crashed nose first into the safety barrier before limping back to the pits with his front wing missing. He took pole position previous year as Mercedes unexpectedly dropped off the pace, though Nico Rosberg’s headline time in FP2 suggested the world champions have solved some of those problems.
Verstappen was 0.380secs off Rosberg’s pace, with Ricciardo just 0.025secs further adrift after recovering from a spin during which he brushed the wall without major damage.
Sebastian Vettel, victor in Singapore a year ago, was fifth and Nico Hulkenberg for Force India.
A win for Rosberg here this weekend would see him leapfrog team-mate Hamilton into the championship lead, with the pair now separated by two points.
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“The window in which we had our auto set up last year just didn’t seem to work here and this year it feels completely different”.
